MECHANIC FALLS – Town officials, annoyed with government red tape, almost walked away from $18,000 to fund the Elm Street sidewalk project, but managed to patch relations with the state Department of Transportation.

Town Manager Dana Lee reported to Town Council last week on the delays and obstacles to the sidewalk project and recommended that the council reject a Maine Safe Routes to School grant. However, state and local officials cleared up misunderstandings by the end of the week and are now back in business together, said Lee.

“It seems we are back on under a much more flexible, can-do approach,” said Lee.

Holly Anderson, project manager for Region 1 of DOT’s urban and arterial highway program, said she saw no reason why Mechanic Falls needed to wait to put out bids for the sidewalk project.

Agreements between the town and state were signed June 1, said Anderson, who was on vacation last week but reached by telephone by the Sun Journal.

“There’s really nothing holding them up,” said Anderson after hearing about the town’s complaints and intent to reject the state grant. “All they needed were the signed agreements.”

Anderson acknowledged e-mails from Lee about the lack of response from the state’s assistant project manager, Guy Whitington. Anderson said she had spoken to Whitington and believed that problems had been resolved.

With only three weeks before the first day of school, Lee said he could no longer wait for state approval and put out requests for bids to replace about 450 feet of sidewalk in front of Elm Street school and another 650 feet in front of the Pleasant View Mobile Home Park.

The town had originally budgeted about $10,000 as its match for the grant and would use that money to build new sidewalk portions according to local requirements instead of federal specification, said Lee.

“I can see why it would cost $18,000 to do it their way,” Lee told council members last week. “There’s been a tremendous amount of frustrations dealing with the Maine Department of Transportation. We just can’t afford to wait on them any longer.”

The plan was to have the sidewalk project coincide with the repair of Elm Street and be completed before school opened. The road job is nearly complete and the town has yet to award a contract for the sidewalk project.

The town had first put the project out to bid after being awarded the grant in June. Then the state said the town couldn’t bid out the project until after site reviews and approval, said Lee.

“Several weeks went by, and at least three different people from DOT were involved,” said Lee. “Finally there was one guy that would call once in a while.”

This is the first year that the state has offered this grant. Currently, two other towns, Gorham and South Berwick, have received the Safe Routes to School grants, said Anderson. She said she had not received any complaints from those towns.

“Some of the construction standards are federal and some are state,” said Anderson. “There are a lot of strings attached. Safe Routes to School is a brand new thing.”

But by the end of July, all of those strings had local officials frustrated and out of patience.

“We decided that we could do something more moderate,” said Lee. “Sure it’s always good that DOT is absolutely thorough regardless of the cost. But we can’t afford to think that way. This just wasn’t worth $18,000.”

Lee said that the town and state have resumed a cooperative relationship after reaching agreements on project requirements. The town still hopes to have the sidewalks replaced before school starts, said Lee.