Keller awarded revised North Main contract
In the News
Nobody is very happy about it, but the Maryville City Council this week approved a new set of ordinances re-executing a contract with Keller Construction Co. of St. Joseph that will enable crews to proceed with re-asphalting a one-mile stretch of North Main Street between Highway 71 and 242nd Street.
The reason for the governing board’s displeasure is a decision by the Missouri Department of Transportation to withdraw $84,000 in Surface Transportation Program grant funds that were to pay for a good portion of the repaving, which carries a total estimated cost of $230,000.
To close the gap, the council adopted a staff recommendation calling for the transfer of $89,000 to the North Main project that was to have been used for the milling and overlay of South Davis Street, South Saunders Street, and Galaxie Drive.
City Manager Greg McDanel and Public Works Director C.E. Goodall said those three streets will now move to the top of the priority list for next year’s round of paving upgrades.
MoDOT made its decision to deny the grant funds following a complaint by Herzog Contracting Corp., which was narrowly outbid by Keller for the North Main contract. According to a staff report submitted to the council, Herzog argued that the city’s bid specifications lacked information needed to make the bids competitive and failed to comply with federal STP grant requirements.
In an appeal to the state transportation agency, which was rejected, the city responded that it has long used the same procedure when seeking road bids, and that the process has always been deemed acceptable in the past.
McDanel said that some details in this and other bid specification packages involving quantities of paving material are left open because the city doesn’t have an engineer on staff and so depends on the companies seeking the contract award to come up with their own estimates.
In response to Herzog’s view that this practice renders the bid process non-competitive, McDanel noted that the offers from Herzog and low-bidder Keller were only $1,300 apart, with Keller bidding $230,166.25, and compared to Herzog’s $231,485.
“I’m angry, but I don’t think we can do anything about it,” said Councilwoman Renee Riedel of the decision to replace lost grant funding with local revenues, thus curtailing the scope of this year’s resurfacing effort.
Councilman Jerry Riggs voiced displeasure as well.
“It’s kind of a bad deal,” Riggs said, but our main priority, and our responsibility, is to overlay the streets as best we can.”
The only other option open to the council would have been to re-bid the North Main job, a chore that McDanel feared would push completion of the overlay beyond the current construction season.
In one sense the debate with MoDOT comes down to bookkeeping, since the STP grant money will remain available to Maryville for the next three years, provided that it’s spent on projects capable of passing through the agency’s bureaucratic hoops.
Right now the city’s plan is to move forward next year with the repaving of a second one-mile section of North Main between 242nd and 16th streets after modifying its bid process to ensure compliance.
Other business before the council during Monday’s regular session included:
• Approval of an ordinance authorizing Wells Bank to serve as a depository for municipal funds.
City Finance Director Denise Town said the agreement with Wells, which can be renewed in each of the next four years, provides a .51 percent interest rate floor, which she described as “close to twice the earnings” offered by the two other bidders, Nodaway Valley Bank and Citizens Bank & Trust.
• Passage of a resolution of support for a proposed renovation of Parkway Village Apartments. The renovation, which involves no municipal funds, is to be paid for with $370,000 in Low Income Housing Tax Credits through the Missouri Housing Development Commission and a $500,000 low-interest loan. A similar application from owners AMB Development was denied by commission last year.
• Approval of a minor subdivision of a landlocked parcel at 1024 S. Walnut St. owned by Dave Robbins. The split will result in four small tracts of land to be divided between Robbins and three adjacent property owners.
• Approval of a contract with Andrew Spire Construction Co. for construction of the 900-foot Spoofhound Trail hiking/biking path, which will run east from South Munn Avenue to a second north/south trail stretching from Maryville High School to Maryville Middle School.
The trail, which is to be completed this year, has a budgeted cost of $145,973, nearly $117,000 of which will come from a Transportation Alternative Program grant through the Missouri Department of Transportation.
• Approval of a contract with White Cloud Engineering & Construction for the design and building of replacement sewer mains in the vicinity of North Avenue and Dewey Street and Eleventh and Mulberry streets.
Built privately many years ago, the 6-inch mains were never accepted into the city sanitary sewer system, which requires 8-inch pipe.
Combined cost of the projects is $126,110, which will be taken from $170,000 set aside for such improvements in this year’s budget. The expenditure will leave just under $44,000 for completion of a third sewer main upgrade at Fifth and Mulberry to be completed later.
• A request by Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation, a private, non-profit group that provides counseling to entrepreneurs and small business owners, for $10,000 in general operations funding. The group received $7,000 from the city to help pay expenses during its current budget year.
Since its founding in 2006, the organization claims to have served abut 700 clients while helping establish more than 80 new businesses in Nodaway and five other northwest Missouri counties. NWMEF efforts have also been linked to the creation or retention of more than 350 jobs and the generation of $20 million in sales.
