Lawton City Council ready to bid remaining “Top 10” street repair projects

City of Lawton officials are putting together bid documents that will allow 30 more streets to be upgraded through the mill and overlay process.

City Council members were reacting Tuesday to a recommendation from their Streets and Bridges Committee, one that will initiate the bidding process for the entrance/exit to Lawton-Fort Sill Regional Airport and for 30 more mostly residential streets that are part of the 10 Wins for the Citizens concept created by Mayor Stan Booker. The streets committee will look at the issue again at a future meeting because of questions about the virtual posting notice for the Jan. 19 meeting where the recommendations originated. But the committee’s action was a recommendation to the council, which is the entity that makes final decisions on such issues.

The idea is to use mill and overlay — grinding off the top layer of asphalt, then applying a new layer — to improve streets and give them an additional five to eight years of life, rather than having to rebuild the roads at a much greater expense.

Ellsworth Construction is already working its way through a $1.55 million list of the first 10 projects, using street maintenance funds identified in the 2023-2024 budget. Council members had said they expected the remaining streets to be tackled in the 2024-2025 fiscal year that begins July 1, when officials could identify more funds.

City Manager John Ratliff said Tuesday the committee’s recommendation had been to borrow the funds that would allow work on those remaining streets to begin this fiscal year, which is why council members directed city staff to initiate the bidding process. Ward 2 Councilman Kelly Harris, a member of the Streets and Bridges Committee, said engineers have estimated it will cost $10 million to do the remaining 30 streets.

King Road, the airport access point from South 11th Street, would be calculated and bid separately because council members have accepted the committee’s recommendation to do that work as soon as possible. Ward 5 Councilman Allan Hampton, a streets committee member who also is the council’s representative on the airport’s governing board, said it is essential to repair the deteriorating road as soon as possible, to match upgrades inside the terminal that are expected to be completed by spring. City officials have said the road project will be let in three parts: the roadway directly in front of the terminal (the most badly deteriorated), the road between the terminal and the parking lot, and the remainder of the road. Engineers have estimated the work in front of the terminal could be done for less than $300,000, while the entire road would cost an estimated $1.1 million.

Council members also agreed with an engineering consultant recommendation to expand mill and overlay work on Cache Road/Quanah Parker Trailway, doing the pavement between Northwest 79th Street west to where state maintenance begins (the work originally was to begin at Northwest 82nd Street). The council also accepted a recommendation to delay the start of mill and overlay on Northeast 25th Street between Cache Road and Heritage Creek Drive until pavement engineers decide exactly what must be done.