Dateline: June 9, 2005

Aldermen accept low bid from Jordan Paving

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

The Clarendon Board of Aldermen accepted the low bid on the 2005 street paving project Tuesday night, but directed city engineers to negotiate with the contractor to scale back the job to meet the funds available.

In a called meeting, aldermen voted 3-2 to accept the low bid of Jordan Paving for $1.38 million. Aldermen Mark White, Bobbie Kidd, and Janice Knorpp voted in favor, and Aldermen Michael Tibbets and Tommy Hill opposed the measure.

The only other contractor to turn in a bid by last Thursday’s deadline was J. Lee Milligan, who put in a figure of $1.73 million.

Mayor Tex Selvidge informed the board that slightly more than $1 million is available to the city for the project, but he reminded aldermen that more than $133,000 would be needed for the first tax note payment in February and $45,800 is still owed to the engineers. He said he figured the city has $833,759 available to actually pave streets.

“If we use our improvement fund now and don’t have it to make the first payment, we’re going to be scratching at the end of the year,” Selvidge said.

City engineer Michael Adams said Jordan Paving is willing to work with the city and also said the reason the bids were so far off from the money available was that the engineers had not understood that only about $800,000 would be available for the job.

“We were looking at $1.2 to $1.1 million and that’s the project we put together,” Adams said.

Alderman Tibbets asked if the city needed to have gone out earlier for bids, but Adams said he didn’t think it would have mattered.

“Everybody’s busy; you can see that from just having two bidders,” he said. “I don’t see a change because of the way TxDOT is letting work out and Amarillo is adding subdivisions. If we re-bid, I don’t think we’ll have any bidders at all.”

The board discussed how to scale back what had been touted as a 60-block project. Adams said, in order for the curb system to work, the city needs to start at the top of the hill and work its way down. He suggested cutting proposed blocks east of Koogle Street and then cutting a few additional blocks west of Koogle. He pointed to Third Street between Collinson and McLean and McLean Street between Clarendon Avenue and Fifth Street as being the least critical on that side of town.

The board voted 3-2 (Tibbets and Hill opposed) to give Adams the authority to negotiate with Jordan and cut the streets as discussed. Adams said he would try to have an answer for the board at their next meeting on June 14.