At least another week before decisions on Floyd County law enforcement center bids

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

It will be another week before Floyd County supervisors get recommendations from their construction manager regarding what to do with the bids received on the new law enforcement center and courthouse update project.

After bids came in earlier this month significantly higher than initial estimates, Sid Samuels, owner and president of The Samuels Group, the construction manager, asked the supervisors to give him until their next regular meeting to look at the numbers, talk to the bidders and come up with suggestions about how to move forward.

Monday morning at the supervisors’ regular workshop meeting, County Auditor Gloria Carr said Samuels wouldn’t be ready this week.

“His message this morning was he’s not ready because the electrical bidder … was gone all last week, and he wants to have all of the numbers before he presents anything to you,” Carr said. “So he’d like you to table it until the 30th.”

Supervisor Linda Tjaden said, “I do know in the conversations I’ve had with him he’s really digging in quite a bit, and I want him to do as much of the legwork as possible so he has a good recommendation for us. If he needs that time, I guess my opinion is let’s give him that time.”

The board members are facing a 30-day deadline from when the bids were opened on Sept. 5 for them to take action, either accepting or rejecting any of them.

Assuming that the low bidder in each category was awarded the bid, the project would be about $4.6 million above what voters had approved bonding for in a referendum in May 2018.

The $13.5 million in general obligation bonds that voters had approved was based on the estimated costs for the project supplied by the design and architecture firm, Prochaska & Associates, of Omaha, Nebraska.

The project includes a law enforcement center built next to the courthouse that would include a county jail and sheriff’s offices, plus updates to the courthouse including a new heating and cooling system, new windows and new elevators and restrooms.

Supervisor Doug Kamm asked Monday if Prochaska is involved in reviewing the bids, saying that company’s estimates are “part of the reason that we’re here where we’re at.”

Tjaden said people from that company were also looking at the bids to try to figure out why they were so far above their estimates.

Supervisors can’t take formal action at a workshop session, but said they would like to speak with Samuels by phone during their regular meeting Tuesday morning. It appears likely they will also agree at Tuesday’s meeting to table any action until a special meeting Monday, Sept. 30.

Supervisor Roy Schwickerath said he’d like to hear from Samuels Tuesday even if he doesn’t have final recommendations.
“I think any input we can get from him tomorrow would be beneficial, he said.

Assistant County Attorney Randall Tilton, who was attending the supervisors meeting, asked if the purpose of the special meeting would be for proposing a new bid package.

Tjaden said, “We’ll have to see what he comes back with. I think he’s gonna give us options as to what direction we’re going to take, and then we’ll have to make a decision, whether it’s approving some of the bids, all the bids, rebidding. I think right now we don’t know where we might be.”

Later in the meeting when the topic came up again, Tjaden said she and Carr had had a conversation with a representative of Northland Securities, the county’s bond underwriter.

Tjaden said they were looking at other options for funding parts of the project.

Carr said, “We’ve also been going through general fund dollars. … I anticipate Sid to come with, ‘Let’s get started with the law enforcement center side of things and figure out how we’re going to do the rest of this.’ There’s bonding and using other county funds.”

Tjaden said, “That’s why we want to see where that difference is between the amount of the increase that’s tied to the new addition versus what really is truly tied to the new courthouse here.”

Also at the workshop meeting Monday, the board:

• Discussed a letter from John Weishaar, owner of Hauser Weishaar Funeral Home in Charles City, saying his business would be willing to work with the county to transport bodies to Ankeny when necessary for autopsies for a fee of $850 per trip, if he has personnel available.

The topic of autopsy transfers came up in July after the pathology group at MercyOne-North Iowa in Mason City announced it was not doing forensic autopsies and bodies would have to be transferred to the Iowa State Medical Examiner’s Office in Ankeny.

At that time AMR ambulance in Charles City said it would rather not do body transfers, but if they were necessary the charge to go to Ankeny would be about $2,500 per trip.

Weishaar said his company’s involvement could be only a temporary solution to the problem, and the supervisors talked about pursuing an agreement with Hauser Weishaar.

Under Iowa law a county has to pay for officially ordered autopsies of its residents, but Carr said there are only a handful of those each year.

• Discussed a new state law requiring that official election ballots have the county seal on them instead of a reproduction of the county’s auditor’s signature. A lengthy discussion was held among the supervisors, Carr and Assistant County Attorney Tilton regarding what constitutes an official county seal and what Floyd County’s procedure should be.

Tilton said that based on Iowa Code, the seal the county has been using on some documents did not meet all the requirements, and he suggested the board officially adopt a seal that meets the requirements.