Highway garage on hold as Town Board rejects bids

NORTH EAST — After careful consideration, the North East Town Board decided to reject the bids received for the construction of the joint highway garage at a special meeting held on Thursday, July 15.

The construction of the actual highway garage building is the fourth and final phase of the shared building on Route 22. 

The project’s other components included the construction of a storage building for the town and the village of Millerton’s highway equipment (completed in December 2019); installing fuel storage tanks and a dispensing system for the town and village to use (completed last July); and the construction of a sand and salt storage building (completed last September). All three components are currently in use by both the town and the village.

Considered the largest component in the entire project, the Town Board adopted a resolution to approve the bid documents for the construction phase in May with bids due on Friday, June 18. At the time the bids were approved, North East town Supervisor Chris Kennan anticipated the garage would be completed by March 2022.

The board scheduled a special meeting to discuss the bids at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday evening at Town Hall. A video of that meeting will soon be online, at www.townofnortheastny.gov.

To date, the estimated cost for constructing the garage has been calculated at $3,127,600. Because of its size, Kennan said the town was required by New York State law to separate the bids according to different construction trades. 

As a result, the town received bids for four different trades: general construction; heating, ventilation and air conditioning; plumbing; and electrical work.

However, as the board discussed at its special meeting, Kennan said the bids the town received were substantially higher than the project estimates. Among the four different trades, the bids received totaled $4,227,725.

After meeting with their engineer, Kennan said the board understood that “as many people know, there have been enormous cost increases in building materials this year.” Much of that is due to the COVID health crisis. Those include hikes to the cost of lumber, metal, electrical materials and other construction materials. 

There are also issues with obtaining the various supplies, which Kennan said puts a lot of pressure on the contractors.

Taking all of this into consideration, the board opted to reject the bids and return to the construction details of the project to see if there are ways the town can possibly lower construction and material costs. After re-evaluating the costs, Kennan said the board will re-bid the project when some of the pressure on prices has hopefully subsided.

While he didn’t have a time estimate for the project moving forward, Kennan said, “We’re going to be watching this very closely and we are going to finish this garage.”