After two rounds of bidding, the Hamlet Town Council has decided not to pursue grant funding for Railroad Street improvements at this time. Council members voted Wednesday to reject all three paving bids and table a Community Crossings application until the January call for projects.
The three companies had a chance to revise their bids, after the council decided last week to cut sidewalk work and tree removal out of the project. But when the updated bids were opened Wednesday, council member Brian Earnest had some concerns with the new low one. “Looking at it, it looks like Walsh & Kelly stuck with their line-by-line bid, like I originally thought they were doing when you bid something line-by-line,” he said. “Rieth-Riley, the same thing, stuck with their original bid line-by-line. And [Mark] Milo’s reduced his in a matter of four days by $28,000. I have some reservations with that.”
But beyond that, Earnest was concerned about the fairness of rebidding the project after each company’s initial bid was made public. “Originally, I think it was pretty clear to these bidders that we bid this line-by-line, as opposed to total scope of work in order to get line-by-line bids, and if you want to subtract lines, you’re able to subtract lines, which is what we did,” he said. “And the bids that came back from two of the companies are exactly that, subtracting those lines from there original bid to get the new number.”
Council President Dave Kesvormas pointed out that the Indiana Department of Transportation has added more chances to apply for Community Crossings grants. He felt that it wouldn’t hurt to wait until the January round, since the town might be able to find more local funding once the state finalizes its 2019 budget. “If we would even do this, we wouldn’t do this until April-ish, could be earlier, could be a little after April,” he said. “So here’s kind of where I’m at with it: we don’t know what we’re going to get back in EDIT. We don’t know what we’re going to get back in terms of our budget.”
Kesvormas said that if more money is available, the town may be able to expand the project to include sidewalks, curbs, or drainage work. He also felt that waiting until January would give council members the chance to talk more with local residents.
In the meantime, Earnest suggested checking to see if there’s any leftover money in this year’s budget to possibly do some other sidewalk work this fall.
