Bids for Elkhorn spillway work come in high

Bids for repair of the spillway at Holton’s Elkhorn Lake came in at more than twice an engineer’s cost estimate, mainly because bidders disagreed with the engineer’s plan for repair, the Holton City Com­mission learned on Monday.

However, commissioners agreed to accept the lowest submitted bid for the work from a Salina-based construction company, on the con­dition that the company work with the city and the engineer to cut the cost of the work.

Engineer Darin Neufeld, repre­senting the Evans-Bierly-Hutchinson and As­sociates (EBH) engineering firm of Great Bend, told commissioners that while the $117,500 low bid from Reece Con­struction was well above the origi­nal engineer’s estimate of $52,000 for spillway repairs, they could ac­cept the bid “contingent upon us coming up with an alternate solu­tion” for repairs.

“Very rarely are we this far off,” Neufeld said in comparing the bids to the estimate.

For more on this story, please log in to your holtonrecorder.net account.