HUTTO — Parents and neighborhood residents who have been suffering along pitted, crumbling County Road 137 will soon be able to enjoy a smoother ride. But first, they’ll need to deal with the dreaded detour. The road will be closed from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays until work is completed.
“We expect city crews to be out there as early as Monday to begin removing the existing asphalt, and then there’s a 10-day ‘spool up’ period for Joe Bland Construction, so they will be able to come in toward the end of that week of work to actually do the asphalt lay down. Within 10 to 15 days this whole project should be wrapped up and complete with work starting on Monday,” said City Manager James Earp.
Council authorized Earp to add the repairs to an existing road project contract in order to avoid having to go through the usual lengthy bidding project, due to the emergency nature of the unsafe road condition. Joe Bland Construction is already under contract to the city for a project at FM 1660.
Funding for the emergency repairs is initially coming from the road maintenance fund, but council asked staff to find other places to cut and not gut out the road improvements.
“We wanted to find money elsewhere in the budget because other things in the city need to get maintained,” said council member Randal Clark. “We put the $1.2 million [budget] specifically to fix the other roads that were named in the improvement report that was done by the third party audit company, and so we want that still to come forward. We don’t want them to not do other maintenance that we budgeted specifically for.”
While council members expressed appreciation for staff working as fast as they could, there was an underlying sense of frustration at the idea that there was not already an efficient protocol in place to get emergency repairs done quickly. “We need to develop a system where we’re able to respond to something like this faster in the future, because it is pretty difficult to wait a month on a road that’s failed,” said Council Member Dan Thornton. “That takes planning. It’s not just going to happen immediately so I’d like for us to be looking at what we can do that’s going to give us the flexibility so the next time something happens we’re able to jump on it within a week rather than within a month.”
The need for faster emergency repairs is an issue that united the entire council. It’s part of an issue Mayor Mike Snyder has been championing throughout his tenure.
“All of our energy should go to critical infrastructure. The roads are literally failing and crumbling and we’re worrying about all this other stuff,” Snyder said. “We’ve just got to find a way to move faster.
I don’t know how else to express my frustration. The people just want to see hot asphalt hit the roads.”
Travelers on CR 137 will need to plan ahead for a detour and delays as road construction commences. Photo courtesy of City of Hutto
