PENDLETON — While the future of street funding is uncertain, the Pendleton City Council approved a new round of street repairs for 2020.

The council unanimously approved a $595,595 bid from Central Washington Asphalt of Moses Lake, Washington, beating out bids by Granite Construction Co. of Hermiston, Humbert Asphalt of Milton-Freewater and Pioneer Construction of Pendleton, which submitted an incomplete bid.

Central Washington Asphalt will use the money to overlay five blocks of neighborhood streets, seven blocks of busier “collector/arterial” streets and a reconstruction of more than two blocks of commercial streets.

The staff report didn’t include the exact streets the city would repair, but City Engineer Tim Simons said they would soon be posted on the internet and residents and businesses would be notified when the work was about to take place.

The winning bid came in well below the city’s estimate, a fact staff is attributing to Central Washington Asphalt already working on a runway pavement project for the city and the falling price of oil.

Simons said the COVID-19 shutdown could cause a drop in state gas tax revenue, a key source of income for street repair in the city.

But for now, the city will try to take advantage of the low cost of pavement repair by potentially adding more projects that fit within its budget.

Perhaps the most contentious issue of the night was a unanimous vote to buy an excavator and trailer for the water department for $101,631.

To kick off the discussion, Mayor John Turner read a letter from Shane Palm of Farm Equipment Headquarters in Pendleton. According to Turner, Palm was disappointed that the city didn’t try to solicit local businesses before selecting a bid from a Pasco vendor.

Instead of a traditional bidding process, the city used a cooperative purchasing agreement, where the city came up with the specifications for the needed equipment, and then used a third-party service called Sourcewell to identify a bidder.

Some of the councilors felt the city wasn’t doing the bidding process correctly or staff should have led the process themselves, which eventually earned a response from Public Works Director Bob Patterson.

“We have the ability in the future to take what we get in pricing from Sourcewell, and contact the local dealers and say, ‘Can you beat this or match it?’” he said. “We can make that level of reach. I will guarantee you that they will not be able to match the Sourcewell price. We know that. You don’t. In the future, we will make that extra effort and bring that back to you.”

Before the council meeting, members met as the Pendleton Development Commission, where they agreed to up the local match for the Vert Auditorium stairway repair project. The extra money will go to adding heating coils to the stairs that lead to the front entrance, which is expected to keep ice and snow from collecting during the cold weather months.