Redkey council made a statement

Sometimes you have to say, “No.”

Redkey Town Council showed some backbone this week when its members declined to approve a change order submitted by one of the contractors working on the town’s enormous sewer separation project.

That doesn’t happen very often in Jay County.

More frequently, local elected officials tend to just take their lumps, approve the extra payments, and hope that a project’s contingency fund will cover the cost.

In this case, what had happened is that the contractor had based its bid on the price a supplier submitted for a lining material for new sewers. But the supplier’s price quoted to the contractor was based upon a specific volume purchase. When the project was scaled back a bit, the unit price of the material jumped.

Thursday night, the engineer tried to pass along the higher price to the town as a way of keeping the contractor happy and getting the job done.

But council members weren’t buying it, and their attorney, Wes Schemenaur, wasn’t buying it either.

The engineer sputtered a bit, then asked, “Can we make them do the work at a loss?”

“Yes,” responded Schemenaur. “That’s why we sign a contract. They signed the agreement. … If somebody screwed up, it’s not the town’s fault. … They signed it. They accepted it. We’ve got a deal… unless I’m presented some other facts.”

Our guess is there are no other facts to consider.

The bid was submitted, the contract was signed, and when the contractor’s costs went up, it wasn’t the town of Redkey’s problem.

What was at stake? More than $161,000.

And beyond that, there was the matter of principle.

A deal, the town council made clear, is a deal. — J.R.