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Town board criticizes repeated delays on parks drainage and splash-pad work
Summary
Grand Island town board members pressed engineering staff for clearer timelines and monthly status reports after the parks drainage and related work missed a February target and remains incomplete more than a year later.
Grand Island town board members on workshop agenda item “Engineering” pressed for clearer timelines and monthly status updates after a parks drainage and related grant project missed a February completion target and remains unfinished.
Board members said the project’s missed deadlines risked grant obligations and youth-sports schedules as engineering work on drainage specifications for ball fields — identified as a new scope element — remains outstanding. "We're looking at it's not done again. I know there's some excuses being thrown out there left and right, but we should not be in June to find out if February deadline isn't gonna be met," one board member said.
The board discussed reasons the town used in-house engineering time as part of the grant match rather than outsourcing full design work. A town official explained that doing design in-house reduced the cash match by crediting staff time, but that approach can delay delivery: "We could have bid it to include the design engineering... but because hours we're putting into it are also crediting towards the [match], that's the address."
Board members pressed for practical next steps: finalize bid specifications and prepare standard procurement documents in advance so the project can go to bid immediately once engineering deliverables are complete. "Once that product is done, we can execute," a member said, asking for the baseline insurance, prevailing-wage language and other standard contract clauses to be ready for plug-and-play use.
Several members asked for regular progress reporting from engineering: percent complete, ETA, and a short monthly status so the board can respond to constituents and track capital projects. "We don't know if he's at 50%, 75%, or 99% ... that's why I'm saying we need to start requesting monthly reports from him on where he is with our projects," one board member said.
Board members also asked about the splash pad and whether engineering had responsibility for that item; staff reported ongoing coordination. The board discussed timing tradeoffs tied to athletics seasons: doing work in late summer after Little League season versus riskier spring work during the rainy season.
The board did not adopt new procurement authority or change the grant match approach during the workshop. Members asked staff to provide a monthly engineering project update and to prepare bid-ready procurement documents once the drainage engineering is finished.
The discussion ended with the board requesting a written monthly update from engineering and asking staff to confirm whether the project can realistically be bid this fall or will slip further.
