U.S. 70 road construction concerns councilors

Portales city councilors are wondering when construction workers, who have been working along the U.S. 70 highway for months, will return to work since leaving for break in December.

In January, U.S. 70 reconstruction project manager John Guldemann said cold weather and freezing temperatures at night would make it difficult to pour concrete, pushing back the restart date to February. Officials are now saying March 4 will mark their return.

This concerned some councilors Tuesday at their bi-monthly meeting because they feel other tasks can be done to expedite the project.

U.S. 70 project officials say they won't restart the project until March. They have opened Avenue K for Eastern New Mexico University traffic during their absence. Councilors are concerned with the closing's possible impact on local businesses.

Councilors also reported that their constituents have noticed the weather warming up, which makes them question why there hasn't been a speedy return to finish the project.

"They just need to know they can be doing something right now," said city councilor Matt Hunton to Portales City Manager Tom Howell at Tuesday's meeting.

Hunton requested that Howell bring the project contract to the next meeting so they can review it and see if there are any provisions that would require them to come back to work sooner, such as a certain amount of days to complete the project.

"They have a contract with the state and the state controls their working time," Howell said.

Howell added the contract should include the amount of days it would take to complete the project and the company would only be exempt when weather is a factor.

"Now it's getting warm again and people want to know why they're not working," Howell said. "But we don't control their work schedule. We try to facilitate where we can to help keep things going."

Guldemann said Wednesday they decided on the March restart date last month in a meeting with the New Mexico Department of Transportation.

"We have a small maintenance crew that kind of monitors stuff lately," Guldemann said.

The crew is supposed to smooth out any roads or fix any ramps and ensure traffic is flowing smoothly through the construction site.

Guldemann understands the concern of residents and business owners on issues of time, but says the quality of the job is at risk if they were to start any sooner.

"We're not from Portales, it's not in our best interest to mobilize our entire to crew if we don't have significant time to work," Guldemann said. "We look for about a 10-14 day forecast with good temperatures."

Guldemann stressed that they need a temperature of 40 degrees and rising to pour concrete and said the weather can provide a small window to do so.

"It's not efficient to just be able to work five hours a day," Guldemann said. "We're trying to look for good sustained weather."

He also addressed why it wouldn't be wise for them to do other tasks, such as ripping more roadway, because weather still plays a factor in the quality of the job.

"All it would be is ripping more roadway, which would cause more problems," Guldemann said. "It is a possibility but it's not beneficial. We'd be leaving a large piece of ground exposed."

He added that there's more liability for them because ripping up roadway would leave less sidewalk.

"We're looking at the best interest of the city," Guldemann said. "We're trying to minimize our impact."

Winter weather has helped cause a two-month loss to the estimated end date of the project, pushing it back from August to October, according to Guldemann.

Howell said the city is removing trees from the downtown area of the project in their attempts to save them before the project reaches that area. According to councilors, the removal of the trees was another concern of residents.

"What we did is try to save them and transplant them to the cemetery," Howell said. "We want to try to save the trees."