10/11/07 - County settles on Page Green Road repairs

Contractor, state to pay about $250,000 to repave a strip of defective roadway

(As Published by Cortland Standard, Corey Preston reporting)

A dispute with a contractor over unsatisfactory work on a portion of Page Green Road has been settled, and work on the road should be finished within the next couple of weeks, the Cortland County Highway Committee was told Tuesday.

The county will have to pay $3,500 of the roughly $250,000 cost of fixing the portion of road, a small price, county officials said, compared to the potential cost of taking legal action against the contractor.

The contractor, Binghamton-based Contour Construction, which had been denying responsibility for pavement failure issues along a portion of the road finished in late 2006, will contribute $178,000 to the repairs, while the state Department of Transportation will contribute $70,000.

“The bottom line is the taxpayers are going to get the road they paid for,” said County Highway Superintendent Don Chambers.

Chambers told the committee that the agreement had been brokered with cooperation from the DOT, which has procedures in place for dealing with disputes such as this.

“Is it the absolute best we could hope for? No,” said County Administrator Scott Schrader, who said he felt the contractor was fully responsible for the issues. “But it avoids a protracted legal battle and frankly it will provide a stable driving surface where, right now, we don’t have one.”

The initial reconstruction work on the portion of Page Green Road running from Ely Road and Congdon Lane was completed in November 2006, Chambers told the committee.

“We had concerns about the quality of workmanship within days after it was paved the first time,” Chambers said.

The quality of the materials used for the road — the asphalt and the granular subbase — did not appear to meet the specifications outlined in the county’s contract with the contractor,

Chambers said in August. Over the course of the summer the road began breaking apart, causing cracks and potholes.

The county formally rejected that portion of road in June, and met with the DOT regarding the
issue three weeks ago, Deputy Highway Superintendent Bob Buerkle told the committee.

Contour Construction has already removed the asphalt that was laid down in 2006 and stabilized the existing subbase, and is in the process of laying down new asphalt, Chambers said.

The new asphalt, mixed by Suit-Kote, will cost roughly $70,000, Chambers told the committee.