Board approves payment and change-order items for Ridgeway Drive and Chestnut Court project; amount discrepancy noted in record

The Board of Public Works on July 29 recommended that the Budget & Finance Committee and the Village Board approve a change order and a pay request for the Ridgeway Drive and Chestnut Court reconstruction project. Board members moved and approved forwarding change order number 2 and payment request number 3 for the project. Motion to approve the change order was made by Trustee Engelhardt and seconded by Trustee Egnor; members voted in favor and the motion carried. A separate motion to approve payment request number 3 for $447,187.01 was made and carried. Board discussion focused on why multiple change orders were needed. A public-works staff member told the board that existing utilities were not where plans or field markings indicated: “the first existing water main, where we thought it was and where it really was compared to the asphalt plans as well as the markings in the field. Nothing really matched.” The staff member described the issue as a mix of “employee error” and inaccuracies in earlier drawings, and called the resulting change order “an unfortunate thing” tied to unforeseen field conditions. Trustees asked whether utilities such as We Energies and AT&T had responsibility for locating buried facilities. The staff member said village utilities (water, sewer, street lights) are marked by the utility department, while private utilities contract locators (USIC) and that the project’s engineering firm used drone mapping to correlate marks with plans. The staff member said future projects will include more thorough locating “at a minimum moving forward.” The transcript records an apparent discrepancy in the reported amount for one change order: the item description at the start of the agenda says the change order increases the contract “in the amount of $30.50 dollars,” while later in the discussion a trustee references “$13,004.50.” The board did not resolve that inconsistency on the record during the meeting. The board directed staff to recommend approval to the Budget & Finance Committee and Village Board; the motions were carried on voice votes. No additional conditions or formal amendments were recorded at the meeting. The board’s actions will next appear before the Budget & Finance Committee and then the Village Board for final approval and payment processing.