City staff told council on Oct. 1, 2025, that the East Main Street reconstruction is in an underground utilities phase expected to last two to four more weeks in the areas currently under work, and that staff are actively managing traffic signals and communications to reduce neighborhood cut‑through traffic.

A project presenter identified as Jim said crews are currently performing underground work, which is the first step before grading and visible road rebuilding. “They're gonna be doing that for another 2 to 4 weeks in the area that they're working. After that, you should see grading scars start to kinda look like a road in that area,” he said.

Staff said they are coordinating with utilities (Dominion, FirstEnergy and AT&T) and indicated two contractor crews are on site. To limit spillover traffic through residential streets such as Crane Avenue, staff said they have overridden signal timing on Main Street and are actively optimizing green times to minimize wasted signals and keep flows on the corridor. The city also fixed a preemption device that had been producing false fire‑truck preemptions early in the project and was creating unnecessary stops.

On communication, staff said they maintain an email list of more than 100 residents for regular updates, maintain changeable message boards in the field, and post frequent updates on the city website and social media. Staff acknowledged a community question about why work started near the first week of school; they said funding and bidding delays pushed the start later than planned, and the contractor elected to begin to avoid winter impacts and to keep the overall project schedule on track.

Why it matters: the East Main project is a long‑running reconstruction expected to last multiple seasons; staff emphasized balancing construction progress with mitigating neighborhood traffic disruption. Staff said they will continue daily monitoring and incremental signal tuning and encouraged residents to sign up for email updates and follow posted message boards.