WP to assess penalties for delayed road work: Ehrbar

Richard Tedesco

Village of Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said Monday the village will assess Port Washington-based Reet Construction penalties for delays in the village’s $2.26 million road repair project.

“Our road project is not going very well. We’re having issues,” Ehrbar said at Monday night’s village board meeting. 

Ehrbar said Reet Construction has not completed work it began on two miles of village roads in mid-September last year as expected and the company is now in “overtime” on the project. 

The village’s contract with Reet, which was the lowest of eight bidders, called for the road work to be completed within 120 days.

Work was interrupted in late November because of low temperatures but the contract did take into account weather delays, village officials said.

Reacting to one resident’s question on Monday night about uncompleted work on Cushing Avenue, Ehrbar said he shared village residents’ frustration with the continued delays.

“There are e-mails going back and forth every day. We’re stressed out about it,” Ehrbar said. “We’re having some difficulty with the contractor.”

Christopher Clement, a senior associate for Dvirka & Bartilucci Consulting Engineers, said after the meeting the contractor has currently gone 40 days past the 120 days it was given to finish the project with 65 percent to 70 percent of the work done.

Blacktop and concrete work still remains to be done on some streets, he said, and on Stratford Avenue – a 3,000-foot long roadway – the base material used to repair the street was deficient and had to be replaced.

“They’re having manpower issues and scheduling issues,” Clement said.

He said “unforeseen conditions” had contributed to the delays, so penalties that are to be calculated on a daily basis would be negotiated with the contractor.

Clement said he could not estimate when the roadwork repairs would be completed.

“There’s nothing hard and fast,” he said, adding that the contractor had previously indicated the work would already be completed. 

Efforts to reach executives at Reet Construction for comment were unavailing.

“We just want them to complete the job. Fix the roads and get out,” Ehrbar said. 

The board selected Reet for the job in August on the recommendation of Kenneth Pritchard, vice president of Dvirka & Bartolucci, after the company submitted the low bid on the project. The village board retained Dvirka & Barilucci to oversee planning of the roads project.

The village trustees voted to issue $2 million in bonds for the roads project prior to awarding the contract. The board is also using approximately $225,000 from the state Consolidated Highway Improvement Program for the project.

In other developments:

• Responding to a question from a resident, Ehrbar said the village has spent approximately $96,000 in legal fees on the two water rates lawsuits brought by the Village of East Williston trustees against their Williston Park counterparts.  

Village attorney James Bradley said he expects a decision within two weeks from the state appellate court on the lawsuits filed by the Village of East Williston against Williston Park following increases in East Williston’s rates.

In response to a question, Ehrbar said he has sent “several letters” to the East Williston trustees seeking meetings to settle the dispute but received no response.

“We haven’t met with them,” Ehrbar said.

He said East Williston residents are currently paying $2.99 per 1,000 gallons of water while Williston Park residents are paying $3.83 per thousand gallons.

The East Williston trustees filed the first lawsuit against the Williston Park after Williston Park’s trustees voted in April 2011 to raise East Williston’s water rates from $2.99 per 1,000 gallons to $3.83 per 1,000 gallons. The second suit was filed in December 2012 after the Williston Park village board voted in August 2012 to raise East Williston’s water rates to $4.33 per 1,000 gallons of water.

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