The Finance Committee met 03/20/2023. The entire meeting lasted around 12 and a half minutes. Among the items the committee took up were a request to award the D-23 Sidewalk Construction contract, a request to award the E-23 Miscellaneous Concrete and Street Excavation, a request to approve some 2022-2023 budget carryover appropriations, and a request to approve a number of 2022 budget amendments. All of those were approved with no discussion.
The one item that did prompt some discussion was the request to reject all bids for Unit X-23 Water Main Reconstruction. As outlined in the memo to the committee, the lowest bid on the project was $400,000 higher than what the city had budgeted for. As a result, staff was planning to revise the scope of the project by removing the planned water main reconstruction on Linwood Avenue between Brewster Street and Glendale Avenue and send the more limited project out for another bid. They intended to place the Linwood watermain reconstruction project to an appropriate, as yet undetermined, future year. This comes on the heels of a number of other infrastructure projects needing to be reduced in scope in order to keep them within budget.
The Finance Committee voted unanimously to approve the rejection of the bids, but Alderpersons Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) and Chad Doran (District 15) both expressed concerns about infrastructure projects being delayed.
I’ve prepared a complete transcript of the meeting for your downloading pleasure.
Deputy Director of Public Works Ross Buetow told the committee that they specifically decided to remove the Linwood Avenue watermain reconstruction portion of the project in order to get the contract within budget because, although it was an older, undersized main that was definitely in need of replacement, it was not a critical and could be put off.
Alderperson Hartzheim (who was not a member of the committee) understood that removing this part of the project made sense, but she was still concerned about putting off yet another infrastructure project.
Alderperson Doran (who was also not a member of the committee) also appreciated that staff was finding ways to fit the project into the given budget, but he also was concerned about putting off another infrastructure project. He asked if the only budget staff was looking at for available funds was the Public Works Department budget. Deputy Director Buetow said that this specific project was funding through the capital water utility account.
Alderperson Doran encouraged staff to look more broadly in terms of places to reallocate funds from and to try to make infrastructure maintenance funding a bigger priority for the city going forward. “It’s instances just like this, that have gotten us to this point over the years, where we’re now so far behind replacing our infrastructure even with the best intentions. And a solution’s got to be found, so that we don’t keep digging this hole deeper.”
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3), the chair of the Finance Committee, noted that city staff would have been coming up with cost estimates for this project last year in the summer of 2022 as they prepared the 2023 budget. He thought that had something to do with the disparity the city was seeing between the amounts budgeted for projects and the prices bids were coming in at. “we know that there are a lot of factors still pushing costs with inflation and labor and stuff like that. So really, I mean, a lot of this is we’re trying to guess what a project is going to costs 9-10 months in advance of when we actually even go out to bid, even with the feedback from the people who are most likely going to be the companies that bid—working with them. They’re still you know—they’re trying to give us the best numbers. We’re trying to come up with the best numbers as a as a city.”
Deputy Director Buetow agreed that was an accurate assessment and noted that staff had actually tried to account for inflation and the increased cost of materials when they put together the budget last year because they knew it was going to be an issue, but they had no indication that the costs would end up increasing as much as they did.
He added that they were in that same predicament now as they started putting together the 2024 budget. “Do we assume that these prices are still going to continue to increase at this rapid rate? Are they going to stabilize? Are they gonna go down? So we’re, it’s—it’s a difficult process to try to predict what’s going to happen a year from now.”
Alderperson Firkus stated, “There’s a reason for this. It’s an extremely challenging and rather unique situation that we face—not just Appleton, but other communities as well, when we’re talking about how we budget and prepare for funding these projects.”
Alderperson Hartzheim disagreed saying, “Appleton is unique, should be unique, should be known for prioritizing, and doing better about finding ways to fill those gaps. So that’s what I’m asking. I’m not asking how did this happen or why did this happen or blaming anyone for it happening because we all know that these are factors that are beyond our control, but we have to do better to figure out how to fill those gaps.”
The committee voted 5 to 0 to approve the rejection of all bids for the water main reconstruction project.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1086353&GUID=DEBD8EF1-D62D-411C-8D9A-8ACA4A96C817
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