By Randy Kugler
In May, the City received the low bid of $3.5 million dollars for the reconstruction of Classic Street with all of the features recommended by the City’s consultants including a retaining wall along the west side of the street. The City Manager had estimated construction at $3.1 million and consequently rejected the bid due to the cost.
The Council, which claims to have not been involved in the decision to reject the bid, could have easily increased the project budget with General Fund Transient Lodging Tax (TLT) funds. The additional $400,000 would have amounted to approximately 3 months of TLT revenue. $3.7 million dollars of unappropriated General Fund revenue comprised of TLT collections was available and citizens would have undoubtedly supported this additional investment in the project. Why wasn’t this option brought before the Council and citizens for discussion before the City Manager rejected the bid proposal?
City officials tell us that visitor TLT revenue pays for City infrastructure yet once again by refusing to consider the use of any General Fund TLT funds for this project, proves that this statement is empty rhetoric and demonstrates the inability of City officials to understand how to effectively administer their own Budget to fund infrastructure construction.
Consequences of rejecting the low construction bid in May:
Spending approximately $475,000 in engineering design and consulting fees and then ignoring the recommendations.
The section of Classic Street that will be most heavily used by pedestrians has unnecessarily been compromised by placing those pedestrians between an 8 foot high retaining wall on the east side of the pedestrian path and direct contact with narrowed vehicle travel lanes on the other side.
Splitting the project into two separate time frames resulting in additional cost and street closure time.
Legal expenses to date in excess of $111,000. The majority of these costs were associated with work connected to the rejected bid. Approximately $50,000 of those costs have been spent on the second bid of the project and attorney costs to defend charges of irregular bidding practices by the City Manager during the rebid process.
Loss of the retaining wall on the west side of Classic Street which was recommended to: a) arrest the movement of the street base that is currently contributing to the street failure and will now likely continue into the future. b) prevents the ability to construct the wider street section providing a safer 8 foot wide pedestrian/bike path, safer 11 foot vehicle travel lanes and the 2 foot wide landscape buffer to provide additional separation between vehicles and pedestrians. (Refer to recommended design drawing)
What the Council did find funding for at their November meeting was hiring of yet another City Hall employee at a total cost of approximately $85,000 to $102,000 per year which will be substantially paid for with TLT revenue. We now have 8 City Hall employee positions and 5 Police officers but still can’t open City Hall on Fridays because the City Manager claims staff are too busy.
The Council seems to have no problem finding TLT dollars to hire more City Hall staff. It’s unfortunate that they lacked the same motivation to use available TLT funding to ensure the construction of a safer and structurally improved design for Classic Street.