Green Bay committee approves $75,000 contingency and $56,200 single-source contract to repair Joannes Aquatic Center slides

The Green Bay Finance Committee on April 29 approved using up to $75,000 from contingency funds to make structural repairs to water slides at Joannes Aquatic Center and then approved a single-source contract for $56,200 with Benson and Hall to perform the steel repairs.

City parks staff told the committee state law requires an inspection of aquatic slides every five years. Staff said inspections this spring found significant rust and structural deterioration on the steel wing supports and vertical support columns for the slides. "In summary, what they are saying is the slides are not safe to open to the public in the condition that they're currently in," the parks staff member said. The consultant recommended replacing most or all wing supports and repairing stair-railings and several wood stringers.

Staff presented two principal options: repair the slides for an estimated $75,000 or replace the slides entirely, which a consultant estimated could cost $1 million to $1.5 million depending on the number and height of slides chosen. Staff said repairing the slides would "buy us about 5 years of use" and that a full replacement would be part of a longer-term master-plan and funding process. "What this does is it buys us about 5 years of use so that we can figure out the phasing and the budget and figure out how we're going to implement building something new there," the parks staff member said.

For the immediate work, staff said one vendor with prior experience on these exact slides quoted $56,000 for the steel work; park carpenters could do the lumber work estimated at about $14,000, bringing the combined estimate to about $75,000. Because of the tight timeline to open slides for the pool season, staff recommended treating the $56,200 award to Benson and Hall as a single-source procurement. "Our goal here was, to find a contractor that could do it quickly, so we could utilize these slides this year," staff said.

Committee members discussed funding options, including contingency, the ARPA interest fund, bonding, or reprioritizing capital projects. One alderperson said they preferred using contingency funds because the committee had not spent contingency in recent years. Staff said Joannes and Colburn pools are tax-subsidized and do not fully recover operating costs, while the Resch Aquatics Center approaches break-even.

The committee approved both the contingency allocation (motion carried unanimously) and the single-source contract to Benson and Hall for $56,200 (motion carried unanimously). Staff said the vendor is available to begin work immediately upon approval and that more regular inspections will continue; the next mandated inspection would be in five years unless circumstances require earlier review.