Long-awaited repairs to the Liberty Street midblock pedestrian crossing could cause problems with another city project, it was learned at the Franklin General Authority meeting on Tuesday night.
The street signal project, being done by Clarion-based M&B Services LLC, is due to be finished before Applefest rolls around in the fall.
City Manager Tracy Jamieson announced at City Council’s last meeting that the project had run into extra electrical work and now would not be started until after July 4.
However, a manhole that sits adjacent to the crossing will require extensive work, something Fritz said he had hoped to have done before the signal project is completed so as to not destroy work that had been done during that project.
“So what you’re saying is if (the midblock signal project) is done, you’re going to come in and rip it up,” Jamieson said to Fritz.
Fritz said he had sent a message to M&B asking that it leaves a window of two weeks in its schedule for the manhole project to be completed, but could not guarantee that would be the case.
Fritz said there is still hope, as the manhole project has not yet gone out to bid.
“In a perfect world, M&B would bid on this project and do it all at once,” he said.
M&B Services is under contract with the city to have the street signal project complete by Applefest, which will be held Oct. 4 through 6.
In other business
– The authority voted Tuesday to move forward with the televising and cleaning of the city’s wastewater interceptor.
The accepted bid for the project came in at $354,500 from Utility Services Group Inc., of Camp Hill.
The contract covers 3,770 feet of pipe, just a portion of the entire interceptor that is the part of the wastewater system where most of the city’s street debris such as sand and leaves collect. Cleaning of the interceptor has not been done in more than 10 years.
Both projects ran into added structure work that had not been anticipated.
This brings the total cost of the project that is 95-percent complete, according to city engineer Al Wodzianski, to $75,248.
Wodzianski said the project is awaiting completion of a sludge thickener rehabilitation that hinges on gears that had to be ordered from Germany.
“I don’t know where the Germans are on that,” he said.
Wodzianski said the gears had been ordered, but the wait time puts the project at an estimated completion date of the end of September.
