Hazen City staff report sewer bids about $700,000 over estimate; council weighs televising and contract-splitting

Grant, who presented the public-works report, told the Hazen City council that bids for a planned sanitary sewer lining and spot-repair project came in substantially higher than expected. "So bids came in high," Grant said, summarizing the bid opening where the low offer was $2.661 million compared with an engineers' estimate of $1.957 million.

Grant explained the gap was driven in part by $265,000 the project team included for presumptive, untelevised spot repairs and roadway restoration. That allowance was intended to cover about a dozen known repairs plus an assumed 15 additional breaks that could appear when staff televises pipes that were not previously inspected. "It's a blind guess," Grant said of the assumed repairs, and he offered several options for council consideration.

Council members discussed four main options: accept the bids as submitted and special-assess property owners as projected; reject the bids and rebid at a different time of year; separate the work into multiple contracts (lining, spot repairs, manhole rehabilitation) to reduce prime-contractor overhead; or pay a contractor roughly $50,000 to privately televise the remaining 12,300 feet of unknown pipeline so the city can define the project scope more precisely before committing to construction. Grant noted the bids are valid for 60 days, giving the city time to decide.

Staff also pointed out the project includes about 10% contingency ($266,000) already built into the low bid; removing the unknown allowance or pulling contingency could reduce immediate assessments but might leave the city exposed to cost increases. Grant flagged practical constraints such as weather windows and contractor availability, saying televising and construction schedules are sensitive to seasonal temperature limits.

Several council members said they preferred gathering more information before deciding. "I don't think we should accept those," one member said during the exchange, urging staff to try televising the unknown areas or to split the contracts. Grant said he would contact televising firms to check availability and that the city could wait until the next meeting to take final action.

Next steps identified in the meeting included staff reaching out to televising contractors, evaluating the cost and schedule tradeoffs for separating contracts, and returning to council with recommendation(s) at a subsequent meeting. No formal award or binding decision on the sewer project was made that night.