Village seeking bids for road work

Oxford Village is seeking bids to resurface W. Burdick St. between Ashley Way and M-24.

Sealed bids are due by 2 p.m. Monday, Feb. 18 at which time they will be publicly opened and tallied. For more information, see the public notice on Page 22.

The village is planning to have the top 2 inches of road surface removed and replaced with 2 inches of new asphalt. The road would be restriped as well.

According to village Manager Joseph Madore, the plan is to do the project sometime between July 1 and Aug. 2. Weather-permitting, it should take three to four days to complete, he said.

Madore said ROWE Professional Services Company, the village’s engineering firm, originally estimated the project would cost about $125,000, but now, it appears it “could get as high as $170,000.”

Most of the funding will come from the village budget. A portion is expected to come from the Oakland County Board of Commissioners’ Local Road Improvement Program (LRIP), Madore said.

Created in 2016, LRIP is a discretionary program that provides limited financial assistance to villages and cities for repairs and improvements on roads under their jurisdiction, not the county’s. Communities are allocated a share of LRIP funds based on a formula that takes into account road miles, population and crash data. Municipalities are required to provide matching money. The LRIP program allows communities to bank up to three years’ worth of funding from the county.

“As of right now, the Village of Oxford has $16,754 banked,” said county Commissioner Mike Spisz (R-Oxford).

Spisz noted that figure does not include the 2019 fiscal year, the amount for which hasn’t been finalized.

“(But) if everything went the same as previous years, (the village would) have another $10,251,” he said.

Madore said “no doubt there’s worse” streets around the village, but W. Burdick St. was selected because it’s a main road that connects to the downtown area and plans were previously in the works to use LRIP funds for this project.

“If we didn’t do this road . . . the money was just going to be shoveled off to some other community,” he said.

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