City Scrambles to Find Additional Bridge Funding

WAITSBURG – The City of Waitsburg may be able to breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to keeping the timeline for replacement of the city’s Main Street Bridge on track for the summer of 2017, according to City Manager Randy Hinchliffe. He is hopeful that an anticipated nine-tenths of one percent sales tax grant of $100,000 from the Port of Walla Walla will bring the project back under budget.

City officials received an ugly surprise when bids for the demolition and replacement of the bridge were opened on Feb. 23. The lowest of 12 bids came in $95,000 over the engineer’s estimate for the project, leaving the city scrambling to find funds to keep the project timeline on track.

At the March 15 city council meeting, Hinchliffe told the council he was hopeful the shortfall would be funded.

“Since the bid opening, we’ve been scrambling trying to find additional funds to get the bridge done this year. We’ve reached out to TIB (Transportation Improvement Board), and reached out to CERB (Community Economic Revitalization Board). We put in a nine-tenths sales tax application with the Port, and it hasn’t gone through the formal approval process yet, but we got word that they’re going to grant us $100,000 for the bridge. That should give us sufficient funds to go forward this year,” Hinchliffe told the council.

Hinchliffe said that the plan is to award the bid to low bidder Harry Johnson Plumbing & Excavation in April, based on the $1.7 million grant from the state and the additional $100,000 from the Port.

On March 24, Hinchliffe received confirmation that the Port commissioners approved the grant, which will come from the Port’s sales tax fund. Nine-tenths of a percent of the state’s share of locally generated sales tax goes into the fund, to be used for economic development infrastructure projects in Walla Walla County.

The final step is for the Walla Walla County Commissioners to approve the allocation.

While the $100,000 will cover the shortfall, Hinchliffe said he will continue to pursue additional funds to cover inevitable unknown items and to provide a cushion “should anything drastic happen.”

“We just don’t want to be inundated with change orders as the project progresses. We’ll make that clear to the contractor,” Hinchliffe said.

Hinchliffe said the main reason for the bids coming in so far above the engineer’s estimates is because of a steep cost increase in pre-cast girders. He said the Anderson Perry & Associate’s engineer called Oldcastle Precast of Spokane for pricing when developing the bid. But between the time of the initial call and the time the contractors prepared their bids, the girder costs escalated steeply.

“Our assumption is that the price started escalating as the calls came in. A $400,000 girder went to $550,000 in a short time,” Hinchliffe said. He added that the low bidder was not using Oldcastle, but found an alternative pre-cast girder source in Oklahoma.

Council member KC Kuykendall commented on the possibility of rejecting the bids and the city sourcing girders itself. Councilman Newell said that anything slightly wrong with the construction of girders would open the city to liability.

“My guess is that because the economy is on the uptick, contractors have more work and they’re backlogged and they’re able to get back to healthier margins. I don’t think the engineer’s bid was that far off. I just don’t. I think this is just a sign of the market more than anything else,” Kuykendall said.

Kuykendall suggested writing the contract with a ceiling and possibly including clauses that would allow the contractor to do “value engineering” and split the savings with the city.

The council gave the go-ahead to move forward with negotiations with Harry Johnson Plumbing & Excavation and is expected to formally award the contract the April 19 city council meeting.