Main Street Bid Far Exceeds Promised Costs

It's Wednesday morning and I'm making a couple of updates to this piece. 

First I left out the cost of the consulting engineers. The folks that put the numbers together and did the presentations at the city council meetings. The purchase order for Mcfarland Johnson Inc. is $654,000.

Also not in the mix is the cost of staff time. While you can argue that city staff is already being paid regardless of what project they are working on, the fact remains that staff time is paid for from city taxes. Also it is interesting to note that when grants are applied for and the city needs to make an in kind contribution to the project, staff time has real value.  So it seems that the only time staff time doesn't have value is when we are paying for it.

The city received only one bid for the Main Street Complete Streets Project and that bid was significantly higher then the cost presented to the city council and to the public by the city’s engineer.

As reported in the Conocrd Monitor; "City Engineer Ed Roberge announced this morning that the city will likely need to re-issue the project for contractor bids."

Roberger went on to say that the timing of the bid, due to requirements of the grant, may have limited the number of bidders at this time.

Here are 2 examples of costs over the city’s estimates:

Brick pavers - city estimate - $90 per square yard; contractor bid - $270 per square yard

Granite pavers - city estimate - $120 per square yard; contractor bid - $380 per square yard

Here’s a few more:

Planter at city Plaza - city estimate - $5,000 each; contractor bid - $37,4000 each

Raised granite planter with seat - city estimate - $2,200; contractor bid - $13,000

Bike Rack - city estimate - $450 each; contractor bid - $865 each

Metal Bench - city estimate - $1,200 each; contractor bid - $3,030 each

Solar Powered Trash Cans - city estimate - $4,200 each; contractor bid - $7,900 each

Okay enough with the nickel and dime stuff. Here’s the bottom line:

The TIGER III grant was for a project that would cost  a total of $7,850,000. The city would be responsible for 40% of that or $3.14 million, with the Feds chipping in $4.71 million.

It’s important to remember before I give you all the numbers that the feds are still only chipping in $4.71 million. So here’s where we are today. 

What they call the base project will cost $12,233,629.

That includes all the streetscape and sidewalk elements (except the snow melt system and burying the power lines), Eagle Square renovations and water improvements.

Add another $2.5 million for the burying of power lines on South Main Street and add another $3 million for a snow melt system.

The grand total is (drum roll please)....$17,737,629

From a project that we were told would cost the city $3.14 million plus $2.5 million for burying the power lines, we are now told the projects cost to the city is $13,023,629, when you subtract the Feds contribution of $4.71 million from the grant. 

Not much to add here. Not much reason for me to editorialize. The numbers say it all.