(Updated 2 p.m.) The county contractor repaving Roanoke Avenue will repair more than 60 potholes in the municipal parking lot north of East Main Street in exchange for the right to use a vacant lot on Roanoke Avenue owned by the parking district.
Councilman John Dunleavy has negotiated an agreement with the contractor, United Fence and Guard Rail Corp. of Ronkonkoma, which wants to use the vacant half-acre lot for storage and a staging area. United won a $3.6 million bid to do paving and drainage work on the county road.
The repairs are worth more than $25,000 to $30,000, based on estimates the town engineering department got from a few private companies, Dunleavy said. Those estimates didn’t include the “surface potholes” in the lot, he said.
“It’s a barter,” he said. “It comes out to about $2,200 per month.” The councilman said the company will erect a fence on the site so it can lock up its equipment overnight.
Town board members this morning gave their assent to the deal and will approve a resolution authorizing it at the upcoming board meeting on Tuesday.
United said they will have the parking lot repairs completed in about a week and a half, according to Dunleavy, met with company representatives in the parking lot after today’s work session to mark off the potholes to be repaired. They will start work after the town board approves the agreement.
A United crew met Dunleavy, Deputy Supervisor Jill Lewis and deputy town engineer Drew Dillingham in the parking lot this afternoon to mark off the potholes to be repaired. They met with United crew chief Mark Thornhill to discuss the arrangement on Tuesday.
“The town engineer was there and said the way they are planning to do the repairs is good,” Dunleavy said. “They’re going to do it right.”
The councilman said the town parking district would have had to expend nearly all of its available funds to fix the potholes in that one lot.
The Roanoke Avenue site was purchased by the parking district from Suffolk County National Bank last year to provide additional parking for courtrooms being built by the county in Riverhead, per a deal struck between the county and town years ago in which the town agreed to provide parking if the county expanded the number of courtrooms in Riverhead. The acquisition of the lot depleted the parking district’s available fund balance, which was in the red at the close of fiscal year 2014.
One of the other bidders on the county contract had approached the town about the same kind of arrangement, but he did not get the contract, according to town officials.
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