The low bid for Dalton’s planned 2024 street repaving came in almost $1 million under budget.
Northwest Georgia Paving of Calhoun submitted a bid of $4,588,651.87 for the project, which had a budget of $5.5 million.
The Dalton Public Works Committee agreed Thursday to forward the bid to the City Council for approval at its next meeting on Monday, April 15.
“This is the first time in over a year that we’ve had bids on a major project come in under budget,” said City Administrator Andrew Parker. “The staff does its best to estimate the costs of these projects, but the inflation we’ve seen over the last three years or so has made that hard.”
The city plans to resurface 8.5 miles of streets. That will include about four miles of Abutment Road, from State Route 3 to Walnut Avenue. It will also include some 2.5 miles of Glenwood Avenue from Walnut Avenue to State Route 3, and 1.4 miles of Tibbs Road improvements, from Walnut Avenue to Shugart Road, will be part of the work and about a half mile of Tony Ingle Parkway from College Drive to the pavement joint just south of the lane widening will be resurfaced.
The work is expected to be done by August. A Georgia Department of Transportation Off-System Safety Project grant will fund all of the thermoplastic striping for these streets.
The council members earlier this year approved $3.7 million to go to road resurfacing. That’s in addition to the resurfacing that will be done with state Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant funds, Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax money and county service delivery agreement funding.
Parker said the cost savings will reduce the amount of money taken from the general budget for the work.
“This will help us save taxpayers money,” he said.