The Finance Committee met 03/06/2023. They discussed and voted to approve a number of contracts that came in higher than the city had budgeted for and that required adjustments of one sort or another in order to maintain the budget. Issues discussed during the meeting included the impact of inflation and supply change issues on the increased cost of projects as well as concerns about the potential domino effect of delaying current projects until next year.
I’ve prepared a complete transcript of the meeting for download.
The first item discussed was the request to award the wastewater treatment plan hardscape renovation project contract to Vinton Construction Co for about $500,000 with an additional $60,000 contingency. In order to pay for this project, the city needed to take the money initially budgeted for the wastewater treatment plant’s roofing project and reallocate it for the hardscape project. The bids for the roofing project had also come in over-budget which contributed to the decision to reallocate the funds to the hardscape project. The City planned to re-budget for the roof repairs in the 2024 budget.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) said the trend seemed to be that the city was getting very few bids on some of these projects and the bids were all coming in high. Although they were moving money around and putting project off in response, they could not continue doing so forever.
Director of Parks Recreation and Facilities Dean Gazza did not think that prices would go down substantially. Inflation goes up and possibly stagnates, but it never goes back down. So, he thought the cost of increased wages and equipment would continue to remain high.
This specific hardscape project had already been too high, so the city had split it into two phases, but even after splitting it into two phases it still came back high.
He hoped that the roofing project which they had postponed until next year would not come in higher than they budgeted. “It’s getting to be, I guess, difficult and frustrating. But we don’t want to stop maintaining the infrastructure.” He didn’t see a path where prices were going to go down, so they deeded to “move forward with the resources we have at this time and hope that things get better.”
Alderperson Fenton asked if there were concerns about delaying the roof replacement project. Director Gazza said that they brought in a consultant to look at the roof and the consultant had told them that it would not get any worse by having the repairs delayed a year. However, per Director Gazza, the roof was all rotted throughout and needed to be replaced.
The second item discussed was the request to award the Unit A-23 Concrete Paving contract to Vinton Construction Co for approximately $5.3 million with a $106,000 contingency. In order to pay for this, the city was going to postpone the new concrete paving on Amethyst Drive (between Bluetopaz and Aquamarine Drives), reallocate $200,000 to this project from the Lightning Drive stream crossing/pond construction project, and make budget changes to TIF 11. The postponed projects would be re-budgeted for 2024.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) said that the residents of Amethyst Drive understood that the road was in decent enough shape to postpone the repaving. She was, however, concerned about reallocating funds from the Lightning Drive stream crossing/pond construction project because the City of Appleton was trying to develop more land north of the city and Lightning Drive was needed as another access point to that area.
Deputy Director of Public Works Ross Buetow responded that the $200,000 had been reallocated from the stormwater component of the Lightning Drive extension project. It was a small portion of a much larger budget item which was over $1 million. They planned to rebudget this for next year, and the overall timeline of the project would not be affected.
He noted that Vinton Construction was the only company that had bid on the project. There was a limited number of contractors in the area who do these type of paving projects. There were potentially three contractors that would bid on concrete paving projects in any given year. Unfortunately, this year the Department of Transportation had a lot of projects which may have contributed to only one company bidding because contractors could only take on so much work. Additionally, the city’s project was not appealing work because the contractors could not just pull their paver up, drive down the street, and pave miles each day. Instead, because it was downtown, there were a lot of raised crosswalks, raised intersections, stamped and colored sections, and bump out which required a lot of handwork.
Additionally, concrete contractors were experiencing supply issues in getting the cement material for the concrete which was driving a lot of the high prices and causing a lot of the scheduling issues.
He did note that, although there were not a lot of concrete paver contractors in the area, there was an abundance of sewer and water contractors available and the city’s sewer and water projects typically get 7 bids.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) asked if rebudgeting 2023 projects for 2024 would cause 2024 projects to be delayed to 2025.
Deputy Director Buetow hoped not, and said their desire would be to complete everything within the city’s current 5-year plan; however, he could not be certain another project would not be displaced.
The third item discussed was the request to aware the Unit B-23 Asphalt Pavement Reconstruction project to Vinton Construction Co for approximately $685,000 with a $27,500 contingency. In order to pay for this, the city needed to postpone asphalt paving on Helen Street (between Pauline Street and Glendale Ave) and would rebudget that project for 2024.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) asked what the process was to determine that Helen Street would be the project that was postponed.
Deputy Director Buetow said that (a) it worked out financially and (b) the street had not had significant underground work done last year so it did not have significant temporary patches like streets that had major sewer and water work done last year.
Again Alderperson Siebers expressed concern that postponing projects until a later date ran the risk of causing something scheduled for next to be postponed.
Deputy Director Buetow said the city would have preferred to have completed the project as bid but the funding source for the project was a general fund account, so, unlike with the other projects discussed, the city had not had the option to reallocate funds from other sources for the project.
The final item voted on was the request to award the Unit C-23 sidewalk saw cutting contract to ASTI Sign Incorporated in the amount not to exceed $30,000. This request did not involve any reallocating of funds and did not result in any discussion.
The committee approved all of the items unanimously.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1086352&GUID=794154DC-38FB-4530-B295-F31FC0039DB8
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