Board selects bids for 2015

Portland Board of Works on Thursday selected bids for petroleum products for 2015.
It also approved a master plan for the city’s Safe Routes to School project and rejected a contract with Waggoner, Irwin, Sheele and Associates.
Mayor Randy Geesaman and members Jerry Leonhard and Bill Gibson voted to select the lowest bids from several companies.
Members selected G&G Oil Company’s bids for tractor hydraulic motor oil at $8.09 per gallon and $444.95 for a case, Red EP2 grease and Moly EP2 grease for $86 per case and antifreeze for $7.69 per gallon or $422.95 for a case.
They selected bids from Portland Motor Parts for all other motor oils.
Those included 10W-30 for $7.55 per gallon or $415 for a case; Type A Dextron for $7.75 per gallon or $425 for a case; 15W-40 for $8.09 a gallon or $499 per case and AW-46 for $6.55 a gallon or $360 per case.
Members chose Agbest Propane Services’ bid for bulk fuel. The city will pay the current price when it purchases fuel.
For asphalt products, members chose the only bids they received, which were from Milestone Contractors.
Those included $2.85 per ton of asphalt coating, $63 per ton for 5,000 tons or less of hot-mix asphalt and $115 per ton for 500 tons or less of cold-mix asphalt. Hot-mix asphalt will cost $71.45 per ton for 2,500 tons or less and an additional $40 per ton for areas requiring less than 2,500 tons.
The board also rejected a contract, which had been recommended by the city’s insurance company, with a management and research consulting firm for creating job descriptions for each city employee. The proposed deal with Waggoner, Irwin, Sheele and Associates was estimated at $8,640 and travel expenses.
Leonhard and Gibson asked why the city’s department heads can’t create descriptions for the employees in their respective departments.
“I think that would be the ideal way to go that way we’ve got a good job description from the people that run the department,” Gibson said.
Clerk-treasurer Mickey Scott said job descriptions haven’t been created since the 1980s, and at that time it was the responsibility of the department heads.
Waggoner, Irwin, Sheele & Associates would come work with the department heads and create the descriptions through a questionnaire.
“These people know what is required for an official job description as of 2014. … Our department heads may not know what all legally needs to be put in,” she said. “If you don’t want to employ Waggoner, Irwin and Sheele then it will be a lot longer process. I can tell you that.”
Gibson said he wants the department heads to try to write the descriptions before the board hires an outside company.
“(Creating job descriptions is) something we need to do regardless of how we do it,” Geesaman said.
Ami Huffman, director of Jay County Community Development, presented the board with a master plan — created by DLZ, an engineer and architect firm, and paid for by Indiana Department of Transportation — for the city’s Safe Routes to School project.
INDOT awarded the city $59,700 to have the plan drafted.
“This is the plan for the whole city,” Huffman said. “This is the overall, all the schools in the city’s limits, plan.”
The plan outlines the steps the city should take to make the areas surrounding schools inside the city limits safer. The first phase of the project will be creating sidewalks from Votaw Street near Haynes Park to High Street to Judge Haynes Elementary School, Geesaman said.
The following step would be to consider purchasing more reflective gear for the schools’ crossing guards, Huffman said.
“We’re looking at making the places we already have safer,” she said. “This is an evaluation of where we are and what we can do to make it safer and easier for parents to be comfortable with their kids walking to school.”
“That don’t sound too bad to me. We’re getting by with new sidewalks and not have to pay for them, basically,” Gibson said.