By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Sewer-line work destined to tear up downtown Auburn roads will wait until spring because of a higher than expected price tag.

Work along Main, Drummond, Pleasant, Vine and High streets was set to begin in October, said Public Works Director Robert Belz. The low bid on the project to dig up those streets and build a storm sewer system came in at $623,000, about $200,000 over the project budget.

Now Belz said he’s meeting with that low bidder to see if there are any savings that can be squeezed out of the project.

“Some projects have amenities you can cut, but there are no brick pavers, no sidewalks, no trees or landscaping in this,” Belz said. “There’s pretty much just pipe, aggregate rock and paving material.”

It could push the project start date back to May. Work was originally set to start in October, stop during the winter and wrap up in June. The work needs to be finished before the summer, when a state Department of Transportation Main Street repaving project begins.

“We should know next week just what our schedule for this project will be, based on our discussions with the low bidder,” Belz said. It will also determine the city’s paving work for next year.

Belz said the city opened bids for the Main Street project in August, but put them aside. He’d hoped that bids for the city’s road paving projects would come in under budget, letting the city go ahead with Main Street.

“We’d budgeted a little more for fuel costs for the paving work, so we hoped we’d be a little high,” he said. Those bids, for road repairs, paving and reconstruction, came in right on budget.

And Belz said he’s not getting any help from rest of the economy. Costs for fuel and salt and calcium chloride for clearing snowy roads are also expected to come in high.

“So right now, we’re looking to see what we can do to reduce the budget or find other savings,” he said. That could involve waiting on some paving or road reconstruction work in other parts of the city.

He blamed the high bid on fuel and construction costs as well as difficulty of working downtown.

“There’s a real effort to keep access to downtown shops and businesses open, and that adds to costs,” Belz said. The nearest place to store pipes, sand and other construction materials is in Great Falls Plaza.

“That’s on the other side of Court Street from this project,” he said. “That means, it takes 10 minutes to run and get a load of sand, and that’s a cost.”

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