Elkader Council gets updates on Carter Street and Keystone Bridge projects
By Willis Patenaude, Times-Register
A recent Elkader City Council meeting provided updates for the Carter Street and Keystone Bridge rehab projects, as representatives for both were in attendance.
The first to go was Mason Tieskoetter, the project manager from JB Holland Construction, the company working on Carter Street. Tieskoetter informed the council the project is about 10 days behind and Phase 3 will not be finished as previously planned.
Instead, the contractor will end this year at the intersection, but the intersection will be unfinished. JB Holland will, according to city administrator Jennifer Cowsert, “patch it for winter,” returning in the spring to finish the water and sewer portions that will remain in Phase 3. The “patch” will include elements of the storm drain and completing all of Phase 2, which needs to be completed before the contractor can officially stop for the year.
At the meeting, Tieskoetter stated, “initially, we were pushing to get all of Phase 3 done, but Mother Nature and that time of year, it’s not going to happen.”
Council member Daryl Koehn spoke about the numerous days where no workers were on site when there could’ve been and questioned whether the quick patch will result in less than adequate work.
“We’re pushing into the bad part of weather, and I’m concerned if we’re going to get as good a job as we would’ve if you would’ve been on schedule,” Koehn said.
Koehn continued pressing the issue over the delay, mentioning that JB Holland told council members more crews were going to be on site working, but that never appeared to happen. This led Koehn to ask, “Why are we getting put on the back burner?”
“You’re not getting put on the back burner, per say,” Tieskoetter responded.
“There were many Saturdays that there could’ve been work going on,” Koehn continued.
“That’s fair, but we still like to give our crews a little bit of time off…you can’t expect them to work seven days a week. That’s not reasonable,” Tieskoetter replied.
Koehn stated the city wasn’t asking for seven days a week, just that construction take place when the sun is shining, something he suggested wasn’t occurring.
“I hope we’re not going to get subpar work completed through this bad weather that you’re trying to push through,” Koehn said. “I think we could’ve been farther than we are.”
While Koehn questioned the lost days of work and lack of crews, council member Tony Hauber asked how many more days until Phase 3 would be complete, to which Tieskoetter was unable to answer.
“I don’t have that figured here right now, right this moment,” Tieskoetter said. However, he stated that, once the project picks up in the spring, the company has 73 days of construction left to finish the project. While there is no added monetary cost for the construction if the company exceeds that number, according to Cowsert, there could be added cost with regard to the additional hours needed for an engineer to be on site.
But the real cost, as Cowsert put it, is the “inconvenience to the public,” which has already been inconvenienced due to the paving mistake, which Koehn also brought up.
“Are we on schedule to fix the screw-up in the street? That’s going to be corrected at the intersection?” Koehn asked Hunter Nix, the on site engineer from MSA Professional Services, who was also in attendance.
“Correct,” Nix stated.
“So, when they start paving again, you’re not going to mess up and miss this again? And the correct numbers will be put into the paver?” Koehn continued.
“They will be,” Nix answered.
While this was going on, Hauber circled back to the patch job before Phase 3 comes to a halt, wondering what happens if the contractor can’t get it done before winter.
“We’ve got to get this storm sewer hooked up because, when spring comes and that snow melts, that water has to have somewhere to go. No matter what, we’ll keep working until it’s done,” Tieskoetter said.
Once that was settled, the council moved on to the Keystone Bridge update, which was provided by Julie Neeble, project engineer from Origin Design.
Neeble said the pre-construction meeting was held Oct. 8, with Moyna & Sons, the main contractor on the project. The contractor decided on a staged construction, which will begin in April 2022 and finish in mid-November 2022. The staged construction means Moyna opted to forgo the shuttle approach and, instead, pedestrians will be able to cross the bridge. Vehicles, as has always been the case, will need to enter the city via an alternate route.
While that issue was easily resolved, the issue over payments was not. According to Neeble, the contractor was insistent on being paid every two weeks, instead of the more typical once-a-month for these projects. A side effect of this payment structure is something that has concerned Koehn throughout this project: increased engineering costs—costs Koehn said “were already grossly over budget.”
Because Moyna wants to be paid every two weeks, the on site engineer will be needed more often, which means costs will go up. The early estimate sits around $30,000, bringing the total engineering cost thus far to $385,000, all of which is “repaid through a debt service levy on the property taxes,” Cowsert said.
“Our contract is based on the hours it takes to perform tasks. Doing payments every two weeks is twice the effort. The $30,000 is not just the added cost of doing payments, but also the cost of rebidding the project, and based on the contractor’s schedule and decision to do staged construction, the added material testing costs. The DOT requires monitoring at the concrete plant every week concrete is placed. With more weeks of placing concrete, more tests are required,” Neeble explained.
When Neeble said the company expected monthly payments and assumed that would be the case, Koehn stated, “We should’ve been consulted. We’re trying to watch these fees and you guys just turn us into a bill that we have to pay.”
Neeble stated this was not something Origin could control, since the project was bid through the DOT and the payment schedule is allowed under the contract. She added they simply went on what they “historically see,” and they did not know this payment schedule was going to be requested until the Oct. 8 meeting.
The discussion over cost prompted Koehn to suggest Origin was treating the situation like it was an “open checkbook.”
“At Origin Design, we certainly don’t treat communities as ‘an open checkbook situation,” Neeble replied. “Our core fundamentals since our founding almost 40 years ago are based on integrity and treating people fairly. We are willing to partner with the city in whatever means possible to reduce our time spent on the project, which, in turn, reduces the engineer cost, as we will invoice the city for the actual time spent on a project. Providing observation and material testing services during construction is, by its nature, variable, and the time required for quality assurance services can vary widely due to site conditions, project schedule, unknown number of retests, etc.”
The talk of increased cost led council member Bob Hendrickson to ask if Neeble could speak with the contractor about the payment plan.
“Could we ask them? You know, we’re a small town, we’re really trying to watch our budget, could we pay you every month? Would that be OK?” he said. “I don’t think it hurts to ask…I mean, we know the contractor, he’s a member of our community. I think maybe, if we ask, I think quite possibly they would agree to it.”
On this issue, Neeble stated she had not discussed the payment schedule with Moyna yet. Since there will be no more payments until the project begins in the spring, she has opted to address it then.
