By Jordan Puckett
Sun staff

Design plans for Main Street Batavia were discussed at the June 3 village council meeting.

Village administrator Dennis Nichols told council the bid documents would be completed by June 17.

“The tally of the cost as we have designed it at this point, comes to 5.14 million dollars,” Nichols said. He also said some aspects of the plan can be listed as options or removed altogether, as a way to save money.

One of these potential cuts is the eight inch sewer lining. Nichols said the county could do this after the street project is complete. This would take $93,000 out of the total project cost.

Nichols also said the cable pull boxes were optional for the overall design.

“The three telecommunication companies that will provide services in downtown Batavia, Cincinnati Bell, Time Warner, and Verizon Telecom, each thought they should have a separate duct bank and a separate set of pull boxes,” Nichols said. “We have no need to provide extra pull boxes for different telecom companies.”

Nichols will be meeting with the design team and the telecom companies to work out a better solution.

The cable pull boxes make up $34,000 of the total project cost.

Don Bezold of Burgess & Niple was present at the meeting to answer questions about the project.

Council member John Waite asked Bezold if he had looked at the turn on 5th Street to see if semi-trucks would be able to make the turn with the new street design.

“The larger trucks will need to run over the median, so we’re going to make that a mountable median,” Bezold said. “It will still keep people going eastbound in their lane, but the trucks will be able to maneuver over top of it.”

Mayor John Thebout mentioned the possibility of taking out some of the street lights. The design plan is currently allowing for 60 lights along Main Street.

“We could maybe take 20 out, if the 40 would provide enough light,” Mayor Thebout said.

Bezold said the design team is looking at the possibility of removing some lights.

“The important thing is the aesthetics,” said council member Steve Staton. “I don’t want to see a situation where we have two or three lights on one block and one in the next block. Yes, they’re $6,000 apiece, but it’s a five million dollar project. Now is not the time to make it look cheap.”

“I don’t want unnecessary costs,” Mayor Thebout said. He followed this by saying that if taking out a few lights would work, but would look bad, then “it’s not’s worth it.”

“I totally agree, if we’re putting this kind of money in it, let’s do it right,” he said.

Work on the project is still scheduled to begin in August this year and will be completed by June 2014.