Turkey accepts bids for paving, cleanup

TURKEY — The town board passed motions for bids that will bring street repair and vegetation cleanup to the town.

During the new business section the board accepted bids from Sykes Paving LLC that’ll do paving to fix all of EastFaison Ave. and Birtch Tree Service to do tree trimming on West Carroll Street.

Talks over paving bids were deliberated, as town officials mulled which streets need attention most has expanded across multiple meetings. The choices came down to one half of East Herring St, which has bad breakage, or all of East Faison, which is riddled with dips and potholes.

Ultimately the board opted for East Faison, which goes from Union School Road all the way to Highway 24, because all of it could be paved within their current budget.

“It’s like I said in our previous meetings, I hate to do a piece of street, because it’s like putting a Band-Aid on something because you’re only doing half of a job,” Mayor Pro Tem Rudy Blackburn said. “We have it, budget-wise, for all of E. Faison so we can take care of that street.”

With the road selected it became a matter of picking which company to do the paving between Smith Brothers and Sykes Paving. The dealbreaker came after talks over the inches of asphalt that would be used to fix the street. While Smith’s bid for an inch and half was cheaper at $22,360 Sykes offered two inches for $24,750.

“The reason we were given the option of two inches is because we’ve got little dips all the way down East Faison,” Mayor Max Pope said. “I was told it won’t relieve it but it’ll make that road a lot easier to drive on. “So if were going to make a decision then we might as well do two inches.”

Blackburn agreed, “It’s a better deal to get the two inch, they say more is always good right.”

The boards current budget for the paving is $22,000, they’ll use money from the general fund to pay the difference. After bouncing around some more ideas, the vote for the bid was unanimous.

There wasn’t much debate over the tree trimming bid thanks to the recommendation from Commissioner Tony Moore. He suggested going with Birtch Tree Service for West Carroll and potentially other streets which the board voted for unanimously.

“For West Carroll Street, I recommend Birtch because they seem to be the best estimate,” Moore said. “Just tell them we’d like to give them this bid, but we’d like them to take a look at some of our other streets and see if they can give us a better price for those.”