Farmington overlay project bid accepted

The Board of County Commissioners Monday morning accepted a bid for Central Washington Asphalt of Moses Lake to complete an overlay project on Farmington Road.

The project was approved last November and will include a hot asphalt mix overlay for five miles of Farmington Road north to the Warner Road intersection.

The accepted bid came at approximately $979,750. The state’s Rural Arterial Program is contributing $750,000 to the project.

There were two bidders on the project, with the higher bid coming in approximately $200,000 higher than the low bid. The difference was attributed to mobilization for crews.

“The low bidder can continue operating without mobilization because they are already working on a project nearby,” commented County Commissioner Art Swannack.

Before the bid could be accepted, the commissioners actually had to motion to rescind a call for bids to be published in the newspaper. The county Public Works department ran a legal notice advertising the call for bids on July 13, and it was supposed to run for two weeks. It was not published on July 20 due to an error, and the county thought it needed to re-advertise the bid call to meet the state Department of Transportation requirements.

“The state DOT determined that our intention was there to have the advertisement published,” said Dean Cornelison, assistant county engineer.

“The DOT came back with an approval we didn’t expect to get,” added Commissioner Swannack.

The second bid announcement was rescinded, and the commissioner’s agenda was amended to allow approval in the original bid response.

Cornelison said he is not sure when the project will start, but the hope is for it to be as soon as possible.

“Everything looked great in the bid documents. We’re ready to go,” he said. “As soon as we can get them going, we will. We’re hoping next week.”