Council looks at Main Street project costs and new water policies

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Council looked over contracts for the 2024 Main Street Rehabilitation Project during its workshop session on Wednesday, April 10.

Preliminary plans to rehabilitate and reconstruct Main Street from Gilbert Street to North Grand were approved for bidding last December, with two bids coming in by the March 19 deadline.

Heartland Asphalt and Wicks Construction submitted two similar bids, with Heartland offering a low bid of $2,484,864.57. However, even the low bid is about $342,000 over the engineer’s estimate.

Jason Petersburg, a project engineer with Veenstra and Kimm, was present to break down the higher-than-anticipated expense, with $121,000 of the overage being attributed to the mobilization and traffic control costs due to spreading the project out across different phases. The expense of pavement removal, curb and gutter work, and asphalt also came in higher than expected.

While the city will be exploring ways to bring the project cost down, DOT regulations prevent a detailed breakdown of the bid from being made public until after it is awarded. Still, Petersburg recommended moving forward with the award at the upcoming meeting on Monday.

“Nothing really jumps out at me as far as a reason to not award,” said Petersburg.

The council also reviewed the engineering contract with Veenstra & Kimm to oversee the Main Street project, providing services not to exceed $206,600.

In other business, the council discussed a previously presented amendment to the city code to mandate backflow prevention devices for certain city water customers.

Backflow prevention devices are used to keep contaminated water from being pulled back into the city’s drinking water lines. While most homes and businesses have little risk of backflow, some that utilize a direct connection to the city water supply in their operations may be a potential point of contamination. Car washes, dentist offices, restaurants, and funeral homes are all examples of businesses that could potentially have contaminated water pulled back into the city pipes.

Some of these businesses may already have backflow protection installed, but others may not even be aware of it and the city doesn’t have a comprehensive list of which connections have working backflow prevention or not.

The new ordinance would establish the testing, reporting, and documentation policies for annual inspections along with educational outreach and enforcement notices.

The council discussed several details of the policy, such as floating the idea of expanding the 30-day requirement for people to come into compliance if it’s found they need a backflow prevention system installed. Due to a lack of local service providers certified for the work, there was a worry that 30 days may not be enough time.

On the other hand, it was noted that people frequently put off such things until the end of their deadlines regardless, making little difference for those who call to have the work done on day 25 of 30 or day 55 of 60.

Council member Keith Starr also expressed his disapproval of the entire program, saying the cost of annual inspections and potential installation of new equipment is too high for a minimal concern.

“I think this is an overreach from the government,” said Starr. “I think it’s a burden on our businesses and, considering our priorities, I think it’s tiny.”

In other water business, the council also reviewed rates for the bulk water station. Adding a self-service system to the bulk water station, the city is changing the rates to a straight fee per 1,000 gallons used.

Currently, the city charges $36.53 as a base rate and $4.44 per 1,000 gallons of water. The new rate would be a flat $14 per 1,000 gallons.