Auburn Way North is about to get a makeover.

A project calls for the replacement and overlay of pavement and accessibility improvements on nearly 20 blocks on Auburn Way North, from 22nd Street Northeast to 45th Street Northeast, to include traffic signal, sewer, storm drain, and water utility improvements.

Monday evening, the Auburn City Council awarded the contract to Tucci & Sons, Inc. on its low bid of $1.6 million. The total includes sales tax.

Auburn first advertised for bids on the Auburn Way North Preservation project in 2016 but did not award the contract because the low bid was much higher than the available budget. So, engineering staff made minor modifications to the contract, and timed the re-advertisement to maximize competitiveness and the likelihood of favorable bids.

This time around, the City received four responsive bids, and Tucci’s low bid came in 3 percent below the engineer’s estimate, about 25 percent below the low bid from the 2016 advertisement.

City staff performed reference checks and other verifications to determine that Tucci & Sons, Inc., met responsible bidding criteria, and recommended council award the contract.

Construction should begin in April and last about four months.

Funding for the project is a combination of grant and city-matching funds. Although the bids were lower than the City had expected, budget adjustments of nearly $12,000 from water and sewer funds will be necessary to complete the project.

Councilman Rich Wagner said that, while City engineers argue that it costs the City less to fix the streets in best condition first, that practice leaves some scruffy roads in poor condition for a long time

“I was wondering whether, even though it may be cheaper in the long run to do it that way, we shouldn’t have more of a mix of worst-first and best-first,” Wagner said.

City engineer Ingrid Gaub noted that Auburn has only between $1.5 to $2 million every year in its arterial street preservation fund, and to do the Auburn Way North overlay is going to take about half of those funds just to match the grant. To do a rebuild like B Street Northwest, she said, took about a year and and consumed 75 percent of those funds.

“For us to do a mix, means some years you would not do anything, and then you would do a rebuild, and then maybe an overlay the following year,” Gaub said. “But you are going to get less road work done overall. In the meantime, your good roads are going to continue to degrade and get to the point where spending money on those is going to be at a higher amount.

“… If you had more funds in the arterial street preservation fund, you could probably do a better mix of some rebuilding on short sections of roadway with overlays,” Gaub said. “ … This is a $1.5 million project to do about not quite 20 blocks on Auburn Way North, so it takes quite a bit of money to do all of these projects and to do the rebuild.”