Flowery Branch City Council declares emergency with Spring St. culvert

Posted 7:41PM on Thursday, September 18, 2014

FLOWERY BRANCH - At its meeting Thursday evening, the Flowery Branch City Council gave unanimous approval to declare an emergency with a culvert on Spring Street. According to City Manager Bill Andrew, the culvert was heavily damaged by flooding in May 2013. As a result, there is a dip in the road, and the head wall of the structure broke. "It has since degraded considerably," says Andrew, who says the emergency proclamation allows them to bypass the normal 30-day waiting period for seeking bids on the construction. They originally sought bids on June 9, 2014 for a bridge to replace the structure, but heavy rainfall in early September caused the rebar to break and necessitated an expedited process. Originally, construction on the bridge wouldn't begin until January 2015 at the earliest. Due to the damage the culvert sustained earlier this month, they decided to replace it with a new culvert, scrapping the bridge plan. "We'll get the final design [of the new culvert] in about two weeks. As soon as we get that done, we'll start making phone calls. We've got 10-12 people that we're going to contact [seeking bids]," said Andrew. He expects to award a contract by early November. Engineers typically design these structures to withstand a once-every-hundred-years rainfall, according to a presentation at the council meeting. The flooding in May 2013 was deemed a once-every-four-hundred-years downpour. COUNCIL SAVES WITH NEW XEROX CONTRACT Also at the meeting, the council approved a new contract with Xerox, which will save the city $458.45 per month. The plan will bring in three new copiers to City Hall, the Police Department, and the City Planning Department that are better suited for the city's workload. City Hall's alone will drop in cost from $606.31 per month to $367.59.