Two bids were awarded at the Warsaw Board of Public Works and Safety meeting Friday.
One was for the Buffalo Street plaza project, and the other was for the city hall generator.
City Planner Jeremy Skinner reminded the board that a second round of bids for the plaza project were opened Nov. 15. Three bids were submitted.
At the June 21 Board of Works meeting, the sole bid from R. Yoder Construction Inc., Nappanee, for $1,996,692 was rejected by the board due to the amount. Skinner said then that the bid was about half a million dollars more than what the cost estimate for the project was.
At the Nov. 15 meeting, the bids included a total base bid of $2,267,917.43 from Yoder Construction; $2,511,264.30 from Selge Construction Co. Inc.; and $3,236,502.28 from Hamilton Hunter Builders Inc.
At Friday’s meeting, Skinner said Hamilton Hunter did not have a complete bid application and there were “a number of errors” that needed to be corrected in the Yoder bid. Once the errors in the Yoder bid were corrected, the actual bid amount came in at $4,121,589.76.
He said he, city engineer James Emans and the project engineer reviewed the bid applications and felt that Selge was the low bidder based on the errors and incomplete bid applications from the other two. Skinner recommended the Board of Works approve Selge as the low bidder and award it the contract for the plaza project. He also asked the board approve a change order to reduce the bid by $493,575.
The board approved the award, contract and change order.
Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer asked Skinner to explain the change order in more detail.
“Going through the project design, obviously this was the second time we bid the project, the engineer’s estimate was $1.8 million and (bids) came in significantly higher than the engineer’s estimate. Some of that was maybe some uncertainty in the design and costs associated with the design,” Skinner said.
He said they worked with the contractor to eliminate some of those costs and change some of the items.
“Some of those items in there were very costly and on the higher end, so we worked with them to reduce some of those items and the price of those items. We’ll continue to work with them on some of the design items concerning the piers and the pavilion,” he said.
An allowance for the pavilion is being put in the cost. The original design for the pavilion added about a half million dollars, which Skinner said was not acceptable.
“So we’re putting in a set design amount of $120,000 more for the contractor to provide that pavilion we’re looking to have in this plaza,” he said.
The total changes amounted to almost a half million dollar reduction in the cost of the project.
Skinner said the first phase of the Regional Cities project – being the Buffalo Street project – was completed by the city, which included improvements to street, curbing and lighting. After the city was finished, the city was granted $1,615,000 as part of its Regional Cities project.
Developer Dave Matthews is building the houses along North Buffalo Street.
Skinner said the city coupled the $1,615,000 with money from redevelopment allocation and Economic Development Income Tax funds to get to the $2,017,689.30 for the plaza.
Thallemer said the things cut in the change order were “overdeveloped, they were things that might have been in there that we didn’t need, we didn’t feel we need.”
Skinner said the cost estimate for the “product” was substantially cheaper than the bid prices. “So there was probably some disconnect between the product manufacturer and the cost to place the product,” he said. “And some of it could be material related. So going with a different material reduces those costs pretty significantly, which is resulting in those cuts.”
Thallemer said essentially the project was going down from about $2.5 million to $2 million, with about $1.6 million of it covered by Regional Cities money and the rest by redevelopment and EDIT.
There were three bids for the city hall generator. They included $75,170 from Stateline Power Corp., $88,335 from EvaPar and $74,910 from MacAllister Power Systems.
During the Board of Works meeting, the bids were reviewed, with city engineer James Emans recommended the low bid from MacAllister being awarded. The Board of Works accepted the recommendation.
In other business, the Board of Works approved:
• Changes to the Warsaw construction standards as recommended by Emans. He said the standards were last approved in May 2015 and that the changes were “minor tweaks but standards that need to be adopted by the Board of Works.” He said he worked with the street and wastewater departments on the changes.
• An agreement with bakertilly for operational and organizational review. Of the $63,000 cost, $14,000 will go for strategic planning and $49,000 toward operational review of each city department.
• A change order for the traffic signal modernization project at the intersection of Center and Buffalo streets for $21,914, as requested by Street Superintendent Jeff Beeler. He said part of that came from his department deciding to do the paving of the intersection itself instead of by the contractor.
Beeler also gave the Board an update on the signal, saying, “NIPSCO has completed their portion for the downtown street lighting. We’re waiting for Michiana to come back in and connect ours and we’ll be good.” He hoped they would get the work completed Friday.
“So everything is ready to, hopefully, get plugged in and turned on,” Beeler said.
Thallemer said he did contact NIPSCO and it promised the lights would be on Friday.
• The purchase of two Western Star dump trucks for $413,862, as requested by Beeler.
The purchase of a paving machine was tabled for more information, while the Board approved the lease of a street sweeper for $299,593. The annual lease payment for the air sweeper will be about $64,000 for five years and is being funded by the stormwater utility.
• Christopher Fancil to move from part time firefighter/paramedic and part-time EMS coordinator to full-time as the EMS coordinator for the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory, as requested by Warsaw Fire Chief Mike Wilson. He will be paid $1,963 bi-weekly.
• A contract with code hearing officer Tom Earhart for $8,100 for 2020.
• Annual permits for AA Taxi Cab and Fast Cabs.
