The 2nd Avenue overpass was approved by city council last night for some upgrades.

Both sets of stairs are in need of replacement and once the weather is better Silverline Construction will complete the project for just over $138,000 excluding GST, about $12,000 less than what was budgeted for.

Mitch Minken, general manager of infrastructure and operations with the City of Swift Current, said they didn't have the stairs done back in 2016 when the deck of the overpass was redone because he says the contractor didn't feel they needed to be done at the time.

"They were identified last year, and we didn't get them done in time, and they were in this year's budget," he said. "We will be moving ahead as soon as the weather allows us to get there and get those done. I think they will be replaced in concrete."

The City invited three local contractors to submit bids for the job, and after city council chose the lower bid, Swift Current city councillor Ryan Plewis said he was happy to see a local contractor was selected for the job.

"I think this has been maybe mentioned in the past, Council has the opportunity to tour a lot of projects that we're going to spend capital dollars on and get to see first hand what the money is going to go to," Plewis said during council. "This was one of the projects that we toured, and we actually had a pretty good discussion about in the van at that point in time, and I think everybody came to the consensus that this project needed to be done. I'm glad to see there was a little competition for it."

Frontier Builders were the only other company to submit a bid for the project, and they were asking for over $229,000.