DERIDDER — The on-again, off-again city transit garage project is back on, Mayor Ron Roberts said at Monday’s City Council meeting.

The city accepted $450,000 from the state Department of Transportation and Development last year to build a facility for its transit vehicles and solicited bids for the project.

But DeRidder officials backed out of the deal after the DOTD told the city that it would receive the money only if it finished work on the garage in 120 days or less.

“After we had let the projects for bid, we selected a bid and then DOTD came back and put some constraints on the project that we did not feel we could comply with,” Roberts said.

“Essentially what they told us was that if we did not complete the project in 120 days that they would pay us nothing. Now if we finished it in 119 days, we got full payment. If we finished in 121 days, we got nothing.”

But Roberts said Monday that the DOTD informed the city that the funding was still available and that DeRidder did not have to finish the garage in four months or less to receive it.

Roberts said the item should be on the next meeting’s agenda and will likely be introduced as an emergency ordinance — which requires significantly less waiting time since the council voted on it previously.(MGNonline)