Trempealeau County committee reviews remodel bids, debates $597,000 asbestos allowance; vote postponed

Trempealeau County property and executive finance committee members reviewed contractor bids and funding options for a long‑planned remodel of the county building during a joint meeting April 14, 2025, and postponed a final decision until a follow‑up session.

The meeting focused on bid tabulations for multiple trade packages, cost‑saving ideas from the county’s construction manager as agent, and an alternate priced at about $597,000 to abate asbestos found above ceiling areas in the older, southern half of the building. Rebecca (staff member), who presented the bid tabulation and schedule, told the committee that the project does not yet have conditional state review and that significant design changes required repeated resubmissions to the state reviewer.

The issue mattered because the bids and contingency lines exceeded earlier budget assumptions. Rebecca said the base construction subtotal of the low bidders across trade packages came to roughly $3,056,000; adding the construction manager’s general conditions and fees produced a $3.99 million figure “that does not include any of the alternates.” She told the committee alternates for corridor wall remediation, terrazzo floor refinishing, LED lighting retrofits and a broad asbestos removal allowance would raise the total further.

County project managers and contractors gave itemized figures. For bid category 6 (general construction) low base bids read aloud were about $1,000,003.23 (Samuels), $1,000,004.41 (Jurowski/Juralski) and $1,000,004.94 (Fowler & Hammer). Alternate prices for corridor wall rework ranged from roughly $42,000 to $107,000 across bidders; terrazzo patch/refresh alternates ranged from about $7,900 to…