A couple of road-related projects in Franklinton are basically a wrap, town engineer Kiley Bates reported to the Board of Aldermen during its meeting Tuesday night.

Bates requested, and was unanimously granted, approval of the final change order for Industrial Park Road. There was a $14,820 decrease in the construction cost, brining the bottom line for the project to $195,640, he said.

When the substantial completion inspection for the project took place on Aug. 7, a few “punch list items” were discovered that the contractor will have to come back and take of, Bates said. Those items include cleaning the catch basins and culverts; regrading the shoulders and side slope, where there has been some erosion; spreading grass seed on the shoulders and other disturbed areas; disposing of an old culvert that was removed during the course of the project; and regrading some ditches where sediment has built up, which will ensure proper drainage, he said.

The certificate of substantial completion for Industrial Park Road was also unanimously approved by the board.

Bates reported that the scope of work on the other project — the repaving of 19 miles of Franklinton’s roadways — has been completed as it was initially awarded to the contractor, Barriere Construction. There is money left over, however, due in part to the fact that the per-tonnage price for asphalt was lower than anticipated, he said. Therefore, more roads will now be included in the overlay project. He said he will do the square yard computation on the exact length and width of the footage of roadway that can be paved with the funding available and then meet with Mayor Wayne Fleming about the scope of the additional work. Bates said he will present a change order for the project at the board’s next meeting.

In response to a question from Alderman Richard Dillon, Bates said that the striping work on the newly paved roads is on the way. A good deal of striping will have to be done downtown, including edgelines, stop bars and crosswalks, he said.

“What we’re really trying to do is define the scope of what we want to add, because we only want the striping guy to come in one time; or else he charges us $2,500 to come back,” he said.

Alderman T.J. Butler Jr. said that the work is progressing quickly.

“I think the contractor has done an outstanding job,” he said. “I’ve heard very favorable comments from residents here in Franklinton.”

As a local company, Barriere doesn’t have to travel far to get to work, Bates noted.

“They’ve also instituted some things in their company that helped this job along,” he said. “They clean as they go, and they don’t wait until the end of the job. And let me tell you, your call volume goes way down when you don’t have chunks of asphalt laying around for three or four weeks. They really did a good job.”

There have been a few calls from residents reporting things like seeing a tack or asphalt on the road, but Bates said the call volume was far lower than he expected, considering that all Franklinton residents were impacted by the roadwork.

“They also left door hangers on all of the residences and businesses along the route that explained who they were and what they were doing and so forth,” Alderman Brad Orman added, speaking about Barriere.

The timeline in the company’s contract had the job slated to take 120 days and stretch into November, but it has drawn to a close in 30 days, Bates said.

Fleming said he told Barriere during a meeting Tuesday morning that “they did an excellent job.”

“They are a local company,” he said. “We’re so proud. Most of the people that work out there are from this local area, so they got to do some work here and they really appreciated it so much.”