May 31—Bids for paving projects, a new roof for the Historic Black Knight and new handguns for the police department were reviewed during a recent Beckley Common Council meeting.

Only one company, Southern West Virginia Paving, submitted a bid to supply the city of Beckley with the paving materials it will need for small projects around the city this summer.

City treasurer Billie Trump said Southern West Virginia Paving has supplied the city of Beckley with paving materials in years past and charges the city a set rate per material per ton.

The price per ton for asphalt, curb mix and other material ranges from about $100 to $150.

Council approved a contract with Southern West Virginia Paving, the only bidder, to furnish paving supplies to the city for 2023.

Although city officials announced no specific paving projects during the May 23 council meeting, Trump told The Register-Herald Wednesday that the city usually purchases "several hundred thousand dollars" worth of paving material each year.

In a separate measure, council members awarded a contract to AAA Paving for the milling and paving of North Oakwood Avenue and Sheridan Avenue.

The project will cost the city $150,000.

Trump said the city typically bids out larger paving projects in order to stretch its dollars.

"There are smaller streets that we can do and we can do a limited amount of milling," he said. "But on some of the longer streets, like Sheridan, and a couple of others, it's just more efficient to bid those out."

For some of the larger projects, Trump said, the city can also use federal dollars available through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.

"Generally on those streets that qualify for financing through CDBG, if we bid those out and get private companies to do that, that just extends our ability to pave more streets ... and then it frees up public works to do some of the smaller ones that don't qualify for CDBG funding," Trump said.

Trump said the paving season should begin soon though the city will likely have to compete with the state for paving materials.

"Local asphalt plants can only produce so much, and if you look around, there are a lot of things that are being paved — like the bridge out at Rural Acres (Drive)," he said. "They're using a quite a bit of asphalt out there. So we just have to kind of get in line."

Beckley experienced a similar competition for paving resources last summer when the state was using local asphalt plants to pave and upgrade the West Virginia Turnpike in Beckley.

----In other business, bids for a new roof for the Historic Black Knight and 60 new handguns for the Beckley Police Department were opened during the council meeting.

Vance Law Enforcement was the sole bidder for the handgun contract, with a quoted price of $46,320.

There was also only one bidder for the roof replacement project — Frye Roofing Inc., which quoted a price of $153,600.

Trump said the city is hoping to use a mixture of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) and the city's general fund to pay for the new roof at Black Knight.

Since purchasing the property from Gov. Jim Justice in 2018, Trump said several places on the roof have been patched but a replacement has been imminent.

"It was something we couldn't neglect," he said. "We wanted to get ahead of it and we wanted to make sure that we can recondition the roof, have it replaced before we had any problems."

The bids for the handguns and roof will be reviewed by the at-large council members as well as other city officials before coming back before council for a vote at their next meeting scheduled for June 13.

The final item approved at the council meeting was a resolution establishing guidelines for the use of Freedom Park.

Trump said the city recently accepted roughly $150,000 in grant funding from the state for a new playground at Freedom Park. As part of that funding, Trump said the state required the city to place a restriction on how the park's property would be used in the future.

"We were able to obtain funding from the state through sort of a parks grant, but what we had to do was guarantee that, once they give us the funding, that it will remain a park in perpetuity," he said.

Email: jmoore@register-herald.com