BY MATT MACKINDER
Clarkston News Staff Writer

Road work that was supposed to begin this year on Clintonville, South Clarkston, Flemings Lake and Walters roads will be delayed to 2020, according to Independence Township Supervisor Pat Kittle.
“By the time all the plans were put together, packages put together, it wasn’t until well into the first quarter, almost second quarter, before the bidding packages and engineering specifications were put together,” said Kittle. “When the RFQ (request for quote) went out, the construction contractors had their year pretty well booked up, though the one vendor that did reply, his quote was about 17 percent higher than the engineer’s estimate.
“Obviously trying to be somewhat fiscally responsible with taxpayer dollars, whether they be Road Commission or ours, we met with the Road Commission and the decision was to rebid the project and see if we could get more lead time and more contractors to take a look at it and to submit bids at hopefully more attractive prices for 2020.”
Kittle added that road work on Sashabaw and Waldon roads will continue as planned.
“There were a lot of things that went into (the decision to postpone to 2020 on the aforementioned roads), some of which is that Sashabaw is so screwed up right now and Baldwin is so screwed up,” Kittle said. “We’ve got people driving in the community and in backups in traffic where we’ve never had backups before. To throw more road work in there was probably adding gasoline to an already rather hot fire. Next year, Sashabaw will be done, Baldwin is supposed to be done early in 2020, so when they get around to starting our work, those other north-south major arteries should be good. The negative impacts in our community will, hopefully, be less.
“The good news is no more orange cones this year. The bad news is that there will be more orange cones next year, but the lion’s share of the problem will be done with Sashabaw and Baldwin.”