November 6, 2018
Terrytown’s water project has temporarily stalled as bids for major improvements came in far over budget.City Engineer Jeff Wolfe said the city only received one bid for internal improvements to the water system and one bid for installing water meters on all residential and commercial buildings.Paul Reed Construction bid $1,188,494 to do the major improvements while the engineer’s estimate was $783,552, about a half million over budget.The major improvements are mainly installing new water mains in the Bellevue Addition.“A lot of items are associated with that,” Wolfe told council members. “When you put in mains, you have to put in new hydrants, new valves and make new service connections.”Hennings Construction submitted a bid of $1,089,031 to install the water meters while the engineer’s estimate was $881,860, about $200,000 over budget.“We only had two bids totaling $700,000 over our budget,” Wolfe said. “We have about $240,000 in contingency money built into the entire project. If we use 100 percent of our contingency, we’re still a half million dollars short.”Several calls were made to the state and the USDA to see if additional funding was available, but there’s been no response so far.
