Scuttlebutt turned into reality when it was announced that the bids for the Highway 61 project came in significantly higher than MnDOT, or the city expected.
“Unfortunately, the details of the bid results are not public, so MnDOT is unable to share them with us” said Grand Marais City Administrator Mike Roth to the council at their June 26 meeting.
Based on the information MnDOT could share, Roth said, “We have prepared a table summarizing our preliminary budget ideas, the MnDOT pre-bid estimate, and the post bid estimate. We will further refine this estimate after the contract is awarded. Please note that there is risk that some of the increases we are attributing to water and sewer may be storm sewer and would belong in the general fund,” he added.
The preliminary budget for water, sewer, electric and streets was $1,043,000. MnDOT’s estimate was $774,137 and the post bid estimate came in at $2,305,956.
Councilor Craig Schulte expressed frustration over the higher than expected bids and wondered aloud how the city’s hired engineer firm, LHB, could have been off by $1.3 million. “Someone missed something here,” he understated.
Addressing the $1.3 million overage, Councilor Kelly Swearingen asked, “If the final bill comes in at that, do we have the funds to cover it or do we have to go out to the taxpayers?”
“We have the cash to pay for this, but we can’t pay cash for the next upcoming project,” said Roth.
Because the city has a cost sharing agreement with MnDOT, councilor Tim Kennedy asked if it wasn’t reasonable that the city be considered a partner and therefore be privy to reading the bids.
City attorney Chris Hood answered that MnDOT wasn’t legally responsible to give the city that information, but added there might be a slim chance to get information from MnDOT if the city made a data request.
Roth responded by saying even if the city got the information, it wouldn’t change the low bid. He noted that if the council turned down the bid, MnDOT would probably go ahead with its work and the city would at a later date, still have to have all of the infrastructure done but pay a much higher cost to dig up and redo Highway 61 where the city work was done.
“We’re between a rock and a hard place,” councilor Swearingen said.
“Just hope there’s no more rock underneath,” replied councilor Kennedy, making reference to the excavation jobs that have gone far over budget because of workers running into more rock than anticipated.
Councilor Anton Moody said, “This isn’t a good situation to be in.”
Mayor Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux agreed, but made a motion of support, seconded by Kennedy, and after more discussion—and more voiced frustration by the council—the motion was carried and council voted unanimously to continue to work with MnDOT on the 2020-2021 project.
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