Road Warriors: Mokena Gets Good Deals So Goes For More Pavement

A series of low bids will allow the village board to fix up more roads and sidewalks this year without going over budget.

On Monday, the Mokena Village Board approved three separate bids for road patching, road resurfacing and sidewalk, curb and gutter repairs. Each time, the bid came in under budget. Each time, the board voted to spend the full budgeted amount to get more miles of road repaired, taking advantage of the current rates the contractors are offering.

"Let's add as many streets as we can this year and get some paving done," Village Engineer Paul Pearson said.

The low bid on the street-patching program, for example, came in at $38,358. The village had budgeted $60,000 for about 1,440 square yards of patching work.

So rather than just keep the savings, the village board voted to take that favorable per-square-yard rate and add about 800 extra square yards of patching work – or however many square yards it takes to hit the full $60,000.

Similarly, the bid for sidewalk, curb and gutter work came in at $29,500, but the village will add work to spend the full $35,000 allotted in the budget.

But the largest additions are to the resurfacing of several Mokena streets. The low bid came in at $493,697.75 for sections of 20 streets, so the board voted to add four more streets, bringing the total to $708,700.

Streets previously set to be resurfaced (about 1.87 miles total):

• April Lane (Birch to Walnut)
• April Court (April Lane to cul-de-sac)
• Birch (Cherry to village limit)
• Park Street stub (Birch to terminus)
• Cherry (Willow to Birch)
• Elm Avenue (Cherry to village limit)
• Elm Court (Elm Avenue to cul-de-sac)
• Walnut (Willow to Birch)
• Henry Drive (Hickory Creek Drive to terminus)
• 80th Avenue Industrial Park

Streets added (another 0.73 miles):

• 88th Avenue (191st Street to Tara Hills)
• Union (Parker to Revere)
• Glennell (197th Street to Francis Road)
• Anna (La Porte road to terminus)

The board also voted to spend $13,244.44 of the $63,000 FEMA will reimburse for clean-up costs associated with February's blizzard on paving Front Street and Francis Road west of Wolf Road. This is an extension of a Will County project.

Watch video of the village board discussion. Go to section 7 on the online agenda or the 19:34 mark on the video.