Flint, MI—Thousands of lawn and sidewalk restorations still need to be completed in Flint as a result of service line excavations.
But currently, no company is on the job.
During a Flint City Council committee meeting Sept. 8, Director of the Department of Public Works Michael Brown said that Goyette Mechanical had expended all of their funds with several thousand restorations left to do.
“Goyette is done. They’ve expended all the money that we’ve given them, and we are still about 8,000 short of having all the restorations done, so now we have to work on that,” Brown said.
Brown said the administration is in the process of putting out an “RFP,” or “Request for Proposal,” to solicit bids for companies to do the restorations.
“I’ll probably be meeting either this week or next with Finance to make sure that we get it taken care of, send the RFPs out, and hopefully get them back by the end of the month,” Brown said.
In July of 2019, the Flint City Council authorized a purchase order in the amount of $6,897,389.50 for Goyette to restore the lawns and sidewalks of homes with service line replacements.
After a year, the company had exhausted their funds and still had 5,796 addresses to work on. In July 2020, the council voted to grant the company an additional $2 million to continue their services.
City Administrator Clyde Edwards said the number of restorations needed will grow as more service line replacements are completed.
“There are other restorations that will also be lumped into that. Those are … the approximate work orders that we already know are within the system,” Edwards said. “As they’re continuing to do, those become restorations too. There’s several hundred that will also get added into that number.”
Edwards said the number of people that got their pipes replaced was considerably larger than the initial estimate.
“I think they started with a projection of 28,000 addresses and it eventually grew to some 33,000 addresses,” Edwards said.
With pipe replacement comes the need for restoration services.
Edwards said that on average, the restorations cost $1,300 a piece. For 8,500 restorations, that would add up to a little more than $11 million.
Councilman Eric Mays said residents have been calling him complaining that restorations are not being done.
“That’s a lot of restorations,” said Mays. “No wonder my phone is ringing so much from first ward and other ward residents.”
Brown said that the city will try to complete as many restorations as they can this year, but with winter approaching, they won’t all be completed until the end of next year.
For now, he said residents having problems with restoration can call 810-766-7135, or visit the city website. But at this point, he said, the city can only do so much to help them.
“I have to say, we are getting some done, but very little because we don’t have a company in place yet to do that for us,” Brown said.
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