Chesterton Town
Engineer Mark O’Dell was figuring the bids for Phase I of the 23rd Street
storm sewer replacement project would come in between $100,000 to $110,000.
In any case, he
thought, they wouldn’t be far off the $150,000 threshold at which a
municipality is required to go through the statutory bidding process.
In fact, the
bids--opened at the Stormwater Management Board’s May meeting--proved
significantly lower than O’Dell’s estimate, ranging from a low of $81,019.50
to $108,380.
Even so, at its
meeting Monday night the board voted 3-0 to reject them all and release the
bid bonds, after at least one of the bidders failed to submit a Form 96,
required by the State Board of Accounts for projects whose cost is expected
to exceed $100,000. Among other things, a bidder makes a financial
disclosure in the Form 96 and lists prior job references, to assist a
municipality in assessing how responsible a bidder that company is, that is,
whether it’s actually capable of fulfilling a given contract to spec.
Members then voted
3-0 to expand very slightly the scope of Phase I--by extending it to a point
40 or 50 feet south, past the private driveway entrance to Westchester
Village on the Green--as well as to solicit quotes, inasmuch as the Phase I
costs are likely to fall well below the $150,000 threshold.
As last year’s
videotaping of the 23rd Street storm sewer revealed, long stretches of the
pipe are in danger of collapse, with numerous joint failures, the
infiltration of large amounts of sand and sediment, and the “egging” of the
line in places.
O’Dell had
originally estimated the cost of the entire replacement at between $250,000
and $300,000 but in light of the favorable quotes for Phase I that
projection may have been a little on the high side. Nonetheless, this will
be the first major project in the last three years not to be funded through
the $800,000 bond issued in 2011. Cash on the barrel will be used instead,
with moneys from the Cumulative Sewer Fund, which currently totals around
$407,000.
New Floodplain Map
In other business,
MS4 Operator Jennifer Gadzala reported that the Federal Emergency Management
Agency plans to formally issue a new floodplain map in September. This final
version of the map will incorporate a slew of GIS data provided by Gadzala
during her appeal last year of a preliminary version, which mistakenly
included some 40 properties in the Sand Creek floodplain and by doing so
would have made the property owners subject to the purchase of costly flood
insurance.
Gadzala has
reviewed the final version of FEMA’s new map and, as she reported on Monday,
“there are a few areas where the lines are not going to change” from the
preliminary version.
Meaning, she
explained, that seven to eight property owners--if they want to remain
exempt from the necessity of getting flood insurance--will have to file a
“letter of map revision” with FEMA.
Gadzala said that
the Stormwater Utility has notified those property owners and promised to
provide them with the data needed to prepare that letter.
Streetsweeping
Meanwhile, Street
Commissioner John Schnadenberg reported that the whole of the Town of
Chesterton has been street-swept, fully a month before he anticipated the
job’s being done.
That, thanks to the
board’s purchase of a new streetsweeper earlier in the spring and the
expedited training of a man in its operation.
The Street
Department now has two streetsweepers in the fleet.
Schnadenberg said
that one of them will now be tasked to re-sweeping areas of the town where
tree debris tends to accumulate: Morgan Park and South Second Street, for
example.
Fishing Derby
Postponed
The last week of
rain has left Indian Springs Park in Porter--the venue of the first annual
Kids’ Fishing Derby, scheduled for Wednesday, June 17--miserably soggy
underfoot. As a result, Gadzala announced, the derby will be held instead
two weeks later, on Wednesday, June 24.