By Patrick Newhook/May 5, 2022
Mount Pearl City Council crunched down and debated the costs Tuesday of fixing cracks in public streets.
With spring here and summer just around the corner, municipalities across the province are beginning to discuss their roads and how they will, if they can, go about repairing them.
Councillor Mark Rice, who chairs council’s infrastructure and public works committee, broached the subject as part of his committee’s report.
“The Committee was advised that the tender for the 2022 Asphalt Crack Sealing (tender) closed on March 10 and one bid was received. The qualified bidder was Crown Contracting Inc., with the amount of $52,325 HST included,” said Rice.
Councilor Jim Locke allowed that while Newfoundland experienced less frost this past winter, he has noticed more cracks then before. He asked if the amount budgeted will be enough to address the problem.
“I know each year we budget amounts, in this case it’s over $52,000,” Locke said. “Is that an amount that we figure will get all of the significant cracks done in the city? Are we aiming for 80 per cent of the major cracks, is this adequate to sealing what we need to be sealing because I’m sure that we did the assessment prior to this particular up and down in our temperatures. I’m just curious, first of all do we have more cracks, and secondly might we need more crack sealing given the winter that we had.”
Director of infrastructure Gerry Antle responded by saying that while the City doesn’t measure the cracks, its does budget for their repair. He also pointed out there are a lot of variables involved when it comes to the way pavement splits over the winter and spring.
“We don’t measure the cracks in the city because it can be such an expensive proposition just to measure them,” Antle said. “We spend our effort on the crack sealing work and then we have a budget that council approves on our asphalt and concrete and we move that around. It’s highly variable for us to measure how much crack sealing we need in a given year.”
Councilor Bill Antle noted there was only one company to make a bid and asked if that was normal. He also asked if the $52,000 was comparable to last year.
Director Antle responded by saying there just aren’t that many companies in this line of work.
“Different years we estimate different amounts,” he added. “This year is within what we estimated what the cost would have been… It’s higher than previous years. That’s what we expect is a reflection of asphalt (costs) and particularly oil prices.”
The motion to award the work to Crown Contracting passed unanimously.
