The Wright County Board of Commissioners Tuesday awarded the contracts for construction of its new Justice Center.

 

The board also approved the issuance of capital improvement bonds to cover the cost of the project.

 

Larry Filippi of Contegrity Group, the construction management firm, reviewed the bids with the board. He said there were 39 different categories of bids, plus four alternates, and the bid total came in at about $46.2 million, well under the projected cost $54 million.

 

Filippi said four of those bid categories,  loading dock equipment, facility equipment, safety & security and specialties received no bid. He asked for those to be re-bid or to obtain quotes for the work. Contegrity added an estimated allowance in the bid totals to cover those categories.

 

Members of the board had a long discussion on the first category - Earthwork  & Utilities. Each company that bid was also asked to provide an alternate bid for earthwork for a bituminous trail. Those bids ranged from a low of $6,000 to a high of $33,325. Filippi said that was because there wasn’t a complete site elevation plan, so contractors had to estimate the amount of work they had to do on the project.

 

The commissioners debated how to handle the bid, and decided to hold off awarding the earthwork bid until the county engineer and construction management team could talk with the contractors to determine how they arrived at their bid numbers.

 

Those bids will be presented to the board in two weeks.

 

When it came time for the board to vote on financing the project, Bruce Kimmer of Ehlers & Associates reviewed the bonding proposal.

 

Originally, the county was expecting to issue as much as $54 million in bonds. That number had been reduced to $51.4 million, which was included in the proposal presented to the board Tuesday.

 

Kimmer said since the bids had come in so favorably, the board could lower the bond amount and save money over the long term.

 

The board voted to issue $47.5 million in bonds, which will save almost $275,000 a year in debt service payments compared to the original proposal of $51.4 million.

 

Sale of the bonds will be awarded May 8.