Holton Commissioners award bid for sewer repair
A Kansas City-area utility construction company will perform the first phase of work on the City of Holton’s sewer line improvement project, although the Holton City Commission expressed misgivings that the company selected to do the job wasn’t local.
During the commission’s regular meeting on Monday evening, commissioners unanimously approved a bid of $138,544 from Havens Construction of Liberty, Mo., for more than 180 feet of sewer point repairs in the city, after noting that a Holton firm, Haug Construction Company, had also submitted a bid on the project.
Haug’s bid for the sewer line work was $160,471.80, commissioners noted. Carlson Utility L.L.C. of Topeka had also bid $185,160 on the project.
At one point, commissioners, expressing a desire to keep the work — and the cash expenditure — local, considered spending the extra $22,000 to go with Haug, but eventually decided to go with Havens’ bid.
“I’m a little bit torn, because I’d like to stay local,” Commissioner Erich Campbell said. “But the taxpayers gave us this money, and I have to insist on us being good stewards of that money.”
Holton Water and Sewer Superintendent Dennis Ashcraft said the bid approved on Monday represented only one phase of the sewer line improvement project, the goal of which is replacing clay tile city sewer lines that are more than 100 years old and starting to fall apart in some areas. Each phase, Ashcraft noted, will have its own bidding process.
“It’s going to be an ongoing project, with probably no end in sight,” he said. “Our goal is to get 100 years out of these projects, once we finish them and get them lined.”
That said, Ashcraft told commissioners that Havens had recently worked with the city on water and sewer line extensions to the new Walmart store that is currently under construction. Holton City Manager Bret Bauer confirmed Havens’ work on the utility extension to the new Walmart, adding that the construction company was “easy to work with” and “did a good quality job.”
Carlson Utility, on the other hand, was a company that Ashcraft said he knew nothing about, while he was familiar with Haug’s work. Ashcraft also said that he did not have any contact with Carlson to answer questions about the work, while Haug and Havens both “asked questions about it.”
The first phase of the project will cover seven point repairs, including the construction of a new manhole “on what used to be the old south interceptor line,” Ashcraft said. The new manhole was listed in the bid specifications as an optional part of the work, but he noted that it would be placed “along a stretch of terrain where we can’t reach another manhole with our sewer machine.”
“This would be the addition of a manhole to make it accessible to get from manhole to manhole down there if we have to,” he added.
The other point repairs, Ashcraft said, are in places “where maybe the line is collapsing or had a void in the line” — or as Commissioner Tim Morris put it, “we’re doing the worst first.” When the work is done, Ashcraft said the city will be able to “slipline” the repaired sewer lines, rehabilitating the lines from inside without having to dig them up and replace them.
Morris expressed disappointment that “better information” on the companies and their bids was not given to the commission, but the main issue with the bids was the dollar difference between Havens’ bid and Haug’s bid.
“We can’t look at the bid now and ask Haug to rebid it… We need to go with the low bid, unfortunately,” Commissioner Twila White said before seconding a motion made by Commissioner Dan Brenner to approve Havens’ bid.
The bids reviewed on Monday marked the second time the city had sought bids for the sewer line work. The city had sought bids in September for an Oct. 1 bid opening, but no bids were received on that date, and at the time, Ashcraft and other city employees speculated that local contractors did not submit bids for the work because they were behind on other projects due to heavy rains this past spring.
The sewer project’s work scope includes construction of new manholes and repair of existing manholes, crushed rock replacements and repairs of concrete, curbs, gutters and sidewalks in areas affected by construction work. Evans, Bierly, Hutchison and Associates of Pratt was listed as the engineering firm on the project, according to a bid notice published in The Holton Recorder.
It was noted that sewer line improvements and repairs would be paid for through sales tax revenues collected by the city following voters’ approval of a half-cent sales tax increase in November 2013. Holton city officials had sought the sales tax increase primarily as a means of funding sewer and other infrastructure repairs needed in the city without having to increase property taxes, it was reported.
