Half-million-dollar single bid received for first part of Floyd County law enforcement center project

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A single company submitted a bid on the first major part of the Floyd County law enforcement center and courthouse update project.

Bids were due at 2 p.m. Thursday on the portion of the project covering grading and other site work for the $13.5 million project that was approved by voters in May 2018.

The lone bid came from Cole Excavating, of Greene, for $503,882.

Supervisor Linda Tjaden said they want to confer with the County Attorney’s Office to make sure there is no problem with the county Board of Supervisors accepting the bid with only one bidder.

“I don’t want somebody saying, “Well, it wasn’t competitive because you didn’t have multiple ones,’” she said. “If it’s just one, are we within legal rights of accepting? We just want to make sure that we’re OK.”

The other option, she said, would be to open up the bidding process for an additional time period and see if other companies are interested.

Sid Samuels, president and owner of The Samuels Group, the company hired as construction manager for the project, said all the steps were done correctly as far as public notification and making the bid package available to any company that was interested.

“We’ll check the statute because we’ve had different situations in different counties in Iowa,” he said. “It most likely will come down to the board’s decision to accept the bid.”

In the meantime, he said, his group will check over the bid that was received to make sure it meets the requirements and specifications.

“This is what we’d do anyway, one bid or a dozen bids,” he said.

Tjaden said she was pleased that the bid they did receive was from a local company.

Samuels said the current schedule is for site work to begin about two weeks after the bid is accepted, which will likely occur at a special Board of Supervisors meeting Monday morning.

Removing South Jackson Street next to the courthouse, which the city conveyed to Floyd County for the project, is part of this bid package, but Samuels said he isn’t sure how quickly the street will be broken up and removed.

The street is officially closed to public use now, but the county is using it for parking and access to parking lots at the courthouse.

The bids on the second construction package are due Aug. 29. That is the major part of the project, that will include the actual construction of the new county jail, Sheriff’s Office and lobby connected to the courthouse, as well as the updates to the courthouse that will include all new windows, a new heating and air-conditioning system shared with the law enforcement center and a fire-suppression sprinkler system.

The winning bid on that part of the project is expected to be accepted at a Board of Supervisors meeting on Sept. 5, with building construction possibly beginning the week of Sept. 23.