Summer paving bids include Pumpkinvine option

GOSHEN — Improving the last unfinished section of the Pumpkinvine could add as much as $382,000 to the county’s summer paving program this year.

The Elkhart County Board of Commissioners on Monday opened three bids for the major yearly paving package, which is partially funded by a $1.5 million Community Crossings Matching Grant award. The list of 15 miles of roadway also includes the option of paving a 1.68-mile limestone segment of the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail on the north side of Goshen, which is partly in county jurisdiction.

“We’ve already done a smaller (paving package), hopefully we’ll have some funds to do another one later this year. But this is the big one. It’s just over 15 miles of paving,” said Charlie McKenzie, highway engineer. “Included in it is paving the Pumpkinvine Trail between S.R. 4 and C.R. 28, as well as a bunch of areas where we’re doing smaller paving packages, a couple of asphalt bridge decks that need replaced. It’s a pretty large package.”

The bids each included an alternative quote for paving the Pumpkinvine outside of the county’s 15 miles of roads. The commissioners voted to accept the bids and refer them to county staff for review.

Niblock Excavating submitted a base bid of $2.98 million with an alt of $259,730, Milestone Contractors bid $3.96 million with a $382,000 alt and Rieth-Riley Construction Company bid $3.08 million with an alt of $263,299.

Commissioner Brad Rogers asked if the roadway miles would have to be trimmed from the paving list due to the bids all coming in higher than the CCMG award. McKenzie said the county would just make up the difference.

“We would just fund the difference, that would be the plan,” McKenzie said. “The $1.5 million was to match 50 percent of roads that we applied for, so for example the Pumpkinvine was not one of those roads included with the package. We’re pretty close to that $3 million. We’ll have to fund a little bit.”

The board also approved on Monday an interlocal agreement with the City of Goshen to split funding for the mixed-use trail. The county has not yet committed its own money to paving the trail, according to county attorney Craig Buche.

Rogers said there are a lot of safety benefits to addressing the last unpaved portion of the nature trail.

“One of the dynamics of paving this mile-and-a-half is primarily due to safety, because a lot of this area is clay and it’s compacted gravel. When it rains or after a snow event, after it melts, the trail is quite slippery,” he said. “We’ve had issued with people falling and getting stuck in the clay, things of that nature.”

Goshen Common Council passed the agreement with the county in April. Mayor Gina Leichty noted that attaching it to the larger paving program helps keep it affordable.

The interlocal agreement allows the city to cancel the Pumpkinvine project if bids come in higher than the amount of funding that’s available. Rogers said they’re looking at multiple sources to make up the cost.

“I’ve been working with Mayor Leichty of Goshen City to just look at the possibility of paving that one-and-a-half miles of Pumpkinvine, the first section. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to happen. The county isn’t necessarily going to fund all that,” he said. “We’re looking at possibly the private entity of the Pumpkivine organization plus the community foundation plus Goshen City together as partners. Then we’re going to have to sort some of that out and we will look at these bids and take it from there.”