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By NATHAN HOWELL | Staff Writer

HELENA – The city of Helena is moving forward with their annual street paving project after voting to open up bids for the project on May 24.

According to Helena Mayor Brian Puckett, this is something that the city does each year with money collected through their gas tax. The city has identified four streets throughout the city that have the greatest needs and match the available funds for paving.

“We asked the council to open up bidding for the paving of our streets,” Puckett said. “We tried to identify the streets with the greatest need. The resolution that they council approved allows us to take bids over the next few weeks, and choose the lowest responsible figure.”

The city has roughly $175,000 in the gas tax fund available to spend on this project. Puckett estimated that amount of money would cover roughly one full mile of paving.

To make the best use of this money, the city sought to identify roads in the city most in need of this improvement.

“When we were doing our analysis on the streets we looked at what needs to be repaved and tried to get as close to that as we could with our funds,” Puckett explained. “Last week I went out driving streets looking for the ones that seemed like they needed it the most.”

The four roads that will be included in the project are Braelinn Parkway North, Second Avenue West, Falliston Drive and Englewood Road.

Bidding is open for contractors until June 8 at 2 p.m. At that time the city will unseal the bids and identify the lowest responsible bid to move forward with the project.

“We will look at the low bidders and make sure they meet all of the necessary qualifications and I will write a recommendation of award that will go to the council to approve at that next city council meeting,” Puckett said. “We would then start working on contract negotiation for them and proceed with the roadwork.”

More information will be made available after a contractor is selected for the project.