Seeking separate bids

The Jay County Regional Sewer District is going to attempt to pull some strings with the state’s Rural Development office in order to allow the board’s engineers to bid the district’s three sewer installations as separate projects.
Commonwealth Engineers’ Ben Adams and Wayne Bailey met with the district board Monday evening to go over final construction plans and set a bid schedule for the projects at Foxfire Drive southwest of Portland, the Skeens addition north of Dunkirk and the Willow Drive area in south Dunkirk.
“These are the proposed drawings,” said board president Gerald Kirby. “We want to go pick a date tonight to go to bid.”
Adams said that the three projects are ready to be bid except for a small hitch in Rural Development’s instructions.
“They finally said a-OK … and trust me that was a process,” Adams said. “They’d like to see it bid as one job. We did not set it up that way.
“I’m suggesting not doing that and bidding all three individually,” Adams said.
Bailey said that Rural Development asked for it to be bid as one project in funding instructions. Both Bailey and Adams said that throughout the process they’ve always submitted everything as three separate projects and Rural Development asked that it be combined into one every time.
Adams said he’d like to see the projects bid separately for several reasons. Keeping the projects separate could allow for a larger pool of bidders since each separate project is less than $500,000.
The construction methods are also different, as Foxfire and Skeens will need to be trenched or directionally bored. Some bidders may be comfortable with doing one type of job but not the other.
“If they’re kept separate you open up the bidding,” he said.
The board also has promised Dunkirk city councilman Chuck Rife that the Skeens project, which is slated as a forced-main system, could be bid as a gravity system. Although the gravity system would cost twice as much up front, maintenance would be lower with no pumps to maintain.
Adams said if the project is bid as one package, he likely wouldn’t be able to include the Skeens-gravity alternate.
If the package is bid as three separate projects, Adams said he could have the bid specifications ready as soon as Wednesday. If he has to combine them, he said he would be delayed at least a week.
Bailey said he could speak with Rural Development and explain the district’s situation. The downside, he said, is that Rural Development could slow down the process if it spends too time much authorizing the request to split the bids.
“Running that up the ladder is going to take a lot more time,” Bailey said. “They funded it as one project with three components and that’s the way they’d like to see it bid.”
Adams reiterated to the board that “it’s always been three projects” and that the district will likely get better bids if it is let that way.
Jay County engineer Dan Watson, who was in attendance, agreed.
“You’re eliminating potential local contractors,” Watson said, if the project is bid as $1 million-plus job.
Kirby pointed out that the treatment the district has received from Rural Development has been great and that he’d hate to push the issue and risk souring the relationship — especially since the district and RD will likely have to work together on future projects.
However, Kirby said the possibility of getting the best bids was worth the effort.
“We have been treated exquisitely and we don’t want to screw that up,” he said, but added, “I think we need to sell our point of view.”
The board voted to authorize Adams to bid the projects separately and asked Bailey to pitch the case to RD’s representatives. If Bailey and Adams can’t convince RD, they told Adams to go forward and combine the projects.
Bailey and Adams said they would be on the phone with RD this morning to try to clear up the issue.
Adams informed the board that he’ll fast track the bids with the expectation that Bailey will be able to sway RD and that the bid opening date can be as soon as Sept. 10. After that, Adams said he can review the received bids and have a recommendation for the board by its next regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 13.
A pre-bid conference will be set sometime before the bid opening for contractors to clear up any questions they might have.
After bids are accepted, Adams said the board can hold them for 90 to 120 days. During that time the board’s rate analyst H.J. Umbaugh and Associates will have to perform a final rate study based on the bids to determine a monthly end-user cost for property owners.
In a preliminary estimate performed last summer, Umbaugh presented a monthly cost of about $70. However, due to a lower interest rate on the United States Department of Agriculture loan that the district is securing and construction costs that will likely come in lower than the engineers’ estimate that may decrease.
In other business Monday, the sewer district board:
•Discussed the status of sewage treatment agreements with Portland and Dunkirk, which will be accepting the sewage from the new lines. Adams told the board that each city was presented with a draft and that those drafts are still in negotiation between attorneys.
Adams said he would like to appear before each respective city council to try to get a final draft approved as soon as possible.
Board member Tim Kesler, who serves as Dunkirk’s wastewater superintendent, said he believes that the city council is OK with the basics of the treatment contract.
•Briefly discussed a time-frame for requiring property owners to hook up to the new sewer lines once the projects are complete. Watson suggested 90 to 120 days would be a fair amount of time to allow people to disconnect their septic systems and connect to the sewer line.
•Discussed the possibility of doing early “half” billing. Since the district will have to begin making interest payments on its loan after six months after closing, there is a possibility that construction won’t be complete by that time and that normal billing won’t start.
Adams said in that event, the sewer district could implement a “half” billing until construction is complete to allow the district to make those early payments.[[In-content Ad]]