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Emergency sewer replacement on Polk Street advanced; vote rescinded to amend contract amount and continue
Summary
The committee reviewed an emergency contract to replace a sewer on Polk Street (Bush to Pine). Departments said emergency excavation justified immediate repair and combined paving work to avoid repeated disruption. The committee initially approved the contract, then rescinded the vote to amend the amount and continued the item to the following week for correction.
The committee considered an emergency public works contract under Administrative Code Section 6.6 to replace sewer on Polk Street between Bush and Pine and to repave the block.
Representatives from the Public Utilities Commission and Department of Public Works described visible failures that required emergency sewer replacement and explained that combining full‑block paving now would avoid multiple disruptions to the heavily trafficked corridor. "Because we were going to be coming through and paving this block in a couple of years, it didn't make sense not to go ahead and pave the entire block curb to curb," a DPW representative said.
The budget analyst noted that the paving portion would normally require competitive bidding and flagged the non‑emergency paving expenditure as a policy issue. The departments said they solicited four responses from 12 prequalified bidders and selected the lowest price for repairs.
The committee initially moved to accept the emergency contract, but the chair rescinded the vote to amend the contract amount (from $421,071 to $422,339) and continued the item to the next week to allow for corrected documents and further review.
Next steps: departments to correct contract language and amounts for reintroduction next week and to provide any additional competitive procurement details requested by the budget analyst.
