BRADENTON BEACH – City Attorney Ricinda Perry updated commissioners on June 6 about the drainage project on Avenues A and B.
“This commission made a major improvement to an area in need without burdening the taxpayers,” Perry said of the $2.69 million appropriation from the state for the drainage project on Avenues A and B.
Perry gave a history of the project that included changes in engineering companies as well as changes to the plans, and reported the latest progress.
“I’m pleased to tell you today that we’ve gotten a major segment of B done,” she said.
Public Works staff was used to clean off walkways to prepare for milling of the road.
“High tides I can’t do anything about when the water comes on the road, but at least we have a little bit of something there to catch it,” Perry said. “We got that retention area built and it’s functioning.”
Perry said all the catch basins are done on Avenue B and the subbase on half of Avenue A is being removed.
“That was a big part of what we originally said we wanted to do. I’m coming in on budget,” Perry said. “Commissioner Scaccianoce said Avenue B is pretty rough all the way down.”
Perry said she worked with Woodruff Construction and Superior Paving and found a way to pitch the road and make some corrections to send the water to existing catch basins.
“I can give proper flow that didn’t exist,” she said. “We found some of the road was inverted and it was collecting in there and it wasn’t letting the water run off into the catch basin. We made decisions to crown it and direct it into the catch basins so there’s been a lot of stormwater work.”
She reported that all of Avenue B is going to be paved and the subbase of Avenue A is being rebuilt.
“I had talked to each of you individually about some of this extra cost in getting through A,” Perry said. “They were willing basically to give me a great deal to get these added pieces of paving in, including the elbows off of A. I would be able to do all that but I needed an additional $70,000 to get there, which is quite a bargain for all of this paving, so I talked to Shayne (City Treasurer Shayne Thompson) and Chief (John Cosby) and we do have funding available for that.”
Perry said the city has stormwater money that had been set aside for LTA (the original project engineer) to do a match with the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) with a 50/50 agreement for Avenue B.
“We decided to depart and we had a meeting with SWFWMD about how to undo that because it was married to the Avenue C project,” Perry said. “That’s been stopped. That means the money we’ve been collecting for that stormwater is available. So what I’m talking about is tapping into that stormwater money and the shortfall that I would have.”
She said the whole block of Avenue B is deteriorated.
“I need your blessing tonight that if there is a shortfall that I can use the stormwater funds in order to cover that expense. I’m asking for it to be up to $70,000,” Perry said.
Perry said the extra paving would be on 26th Street, 23rd Street, two elbows off of Avenue A, and all of Avenue B.
A motion was made to approve an amount not to exceed $70,000 of the stormwater line item to be determined by the treasurer. The motion passed unanimously.
Perry noted that she needed to have the project completed by June 30.
Based on Woodruff’s recommendation that moving the existing catch basins on 20th Place may result in driving water into people’s driveways, Perry requested that commissioners make a motion to eliminate the paving on 20th Place.
“The last thing I want to do with this project is compound someone’s flooding issue,” she said.
The motion passed unanimously.
