John Scarffe, Nederland. The NedPeds project was scheduled to be wrapped up by Friday, November 18, 2016. Both the Nederland Board of Trustees and the Nederland Downtown Development Authority Board learned that during regular meetings on Tuesday, November 15th, and Wednesday, November 16th, at the Nederland Community Center.

Todd Ficken and Alex Knettel, project engineers with F&D International, which oversees the NedPeds project, told the Board that last week they weren’t too happy with the punch list report from the NedPeds project, and the update memo they turned into the Board reflected that. The NedPeds project involves constructing a new Nederland pathway from the RTD lot to the Post Office, while improving Town storm water drainage along the way.

“From the time I wrote that progress memo till today things have changed a lot,” Ficken said. “I’m happy to report they did a lot of the punch list items, so things are getting wrapped up for this interim season.”

The contractors still have to complete a few items, but they should be wrapped up by Friday of this week, Ficken said. They have to shut off the water valves, and due to the fact that the RTD buses keep driving over the path, they may have to install a guard rail.

The contractors did clean up their construction yard and got a bunch of the paper work done that the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) requires for grant reimbursements. They do have erosion control in as well.

Trustee Dallas Masters said he would love to see a copy of the punch list, which contains the projects the contractor must complete before quitting for the season. “Going forward, how do we deal with people driving on it?” Masters asked.

Ficken said that in his view it’s obvious where the road is, and once the asphalt is down it will be even more obvious where the road is. It will be a matter of maintenance work. “When you have the money, you can remove the crusher fine and put pavers down.”

Masters said: “What we’re seeing is that rocks are going everywhere. We need to figure out a maintenance plan. Potentially, we need to start thinking about how we’re going to fix this project.

“We got exactly what we designed. Can we figure out ways to improve it, so we’re not spending all of our time with rocks and worrying about people driving on the crusher fine? Driving down Second Street right now it doesn’t seem very level at all. It’s already torn up. Maybe in two months it’s going to be really bad.”

Ficken said he would like to see what it looks like in the spring. A remedy is to put porous asphalt down on the gravel. It will still maintain the permeability but get rid of the loose gravel. “I think it looks a lot smoother than the old street does.”

Trustee Kevin Mueller said we knew this project was going to be higher maintenance cost but the maintenance is local, and the chance increases of the maintenance person spending that money in Town. Reducing maintenance isn’t always a sustainable action, he said.

Trustee Topher Donahue said, “I think the experimental project is a bit in question.” Sidewalks can be driven on, the gravel and the flying dust that comes off the crusher fine are issues.

“We keep the windows closed on that side of the house,” Donahue said. “We’re using the alley to go through. I think we ought to look at porous asphalt on all of it because that’s what we’re going to end up with anyway. It’s been a pretty miserable place to live with the dust blowing. Pave the sidewalk with porous asphalt too and do it while the truck is up here.”

Ficken suggested finding some money to put in pavers and additional porous asphalt. “You will have a very nice looking streetscape. It will require some budget. Putting some mag chloride down will help.”

Donahue said that no matter what we do traffic is going to drive over those sidewalks. “We would get by way cheaper if we just put porous asphalt down.”

Masters said he wanted to reiterate that we don’t let this go until spring. They should push back on the contractor because all those issues are still there.

“I think we’re going to have to bite the bullet and spend more money to modify it and make it work,” Masters said. “Everyone in town is complaining about it and talking about it. We need to make sure we keep this on our plate.”

Town Administrator Alisha Reis said the DDA simply has no more money. Mayor Kristopher Larsen said that in the next two months through January they could look at what these optional amounts might be and then see if this is something the Board wants to tackle before spring. Mayor Pro-Tem Charles Wood said that if they’re going to make a big change they need to start that tomorrow.

Masters said the Board could allocate money to hire an engineer to make recommendations about a couple of things here and there. “I can think of ideas right now. Let’s use the time. An engineer might say this was a bad design anyway.”

Reis said it’s a real challenge to be at this stage, and the Town does not have $20,000 to spend on an engineer. Staff and the rest of the project team can come up with some other options and present them at the next meeting.

Reis told the DDA Board on Wednesday night that the contractor is pretty well through punch list. The Board of Trustees asked that the project team look at a couple of solutions for parking on gravel, the instability of that material and looking at the viability of the crusher fine in that area.

The team will be looking at that as well as the operations plan – getting down to long-term care and maintenance of the project, Reis said. The Town has paid the first two bills for construction, totaling $180,000, and submitted those to CDOT for reimbursement. General fund cash paid for everything, and now they’re reconciling it.

The contractor completed the required CDOT paperwork, so F&D International can look at it and start getting reimbursements. Reis said she will report back to the Board as they come in, but she is not optimistic they will see any of the reimbursements this year.

“We’ll get the bulk back in 2017. We’ll continue to report on how things are going and will send a report and the punch list. We learned a lot of lessons from this project that we would like to improve on it going forward,” Reis said.

Wood said that the issue was things are still not quite done, and the contractor is coming back next year. “By time they come back, we want to make sure we understand all the issues like crusher fine and buses driving over the sidewalk. Before that contractor leaves, we want to make sure we have choices of how to deal with those issues.”

DDA Board Member Susan Schneider said that we will not be paying them in full until the project is done. Reis said CDOT came out and went through the punch list, and the contractor won’t get paid until CDOT approves the work.

The next meeting of the Nederland Board of Trustees will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, December 6, 2016 at the Nederland Community Center. The December 20th meeting has been canceled. The December 21st meeting of the DDA Board was canceled. The next meeting of the Nederland Downtown Development Authority will be at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 18, 2017, at the Nederland Community Center.