TUESDAY NOV 3RD BELOIT CITY COUNCIL MEETING

Beloit City Council

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

By Terry Bailey

The Beloit City Councilors convened for their regular bi-weekly meeting at city hall on Tuesday, November 3^rd to conduct the business of the City. All Councilors were present for the meeting as well as City Administrator Glenn Rodden and City Attorney Katie Schroeder. Jessica Rosebaugh was in attendance, sitting in for the absent Amanda Lomax. A Councilor position for the Fourth Ward remains empty with no one showing interest in filling that position vacated by the resignation of Charlene Abel.

In the time reserved for Councilor comments at the beginning of the meeting, Bob Richards wanted to thank City crews for fixing 10^th Street. Kent Miller noted the continuing work on the parking lot on the east side of the Law Enforcement Center. The new parking lot will be used exclusively by the City and the County vehicles but it should open up parking in front of the library for added use. Matt Otte wanted to extend recognition to fourth place finish at the State Tournament of the Beloit High School Lady Trojans Volleyball team.

City Administrator Glenn Rodden told the Council that he had just received a refund check from Blue Cross/Blue Shield in the amount of $331,000 as a refund for low usage of the employees’ health insurance. He suggested they consider rebating an amount of the rebate to the employees participating in the health insurance program and committing the remainder of the rebate to the Employee’s Benefit Fund. Rodden said there were fifty eight employees in the program.

At the request of Councilor Bob Pettererson Rodden briefly reported on his trip to Seattle, Washington for a conference there. Rodden said a popular topic at the conference was the use of technology in Law Enforcement. Items such as police body cameras, drones with cameras and other technology were subjects of great interest. One development with an uncertain future was armed drones.

The Council unanimously approved Resolution 2015-23 declaring a structure at 200 Roosevelt Drive to be an unfit structure. The owner Jerry P. Bosser will be notified of the pending action by the City.

City Attorney Katie Schoroeder led the Council through a discussion of developing an Improvement District including the North Campus and Silver Fox additions. Twelve metal light poles with lights will be installed at a cost of $22,000. Homeowners will assessed costs of these improvements. A public hearing will be held on November 17, 2015 to allow for public comments regarding the project.

Schwab-Eaton engineers Ian Reekie and Stuart Porter addressed the Council regarding the bid letting of the K-14 improvement project. They did not have good news. Porter said that by comparing similar projects in North Central Kansas the expected bid for the Beloit project was in the neighborhood of $733,000. With the State of Kansas contributing a maximum of $750,000 for the project the initial numbers were encouraging.

However the project received only one bidder for the work. This bid was for a sum of $1,237,000, well above the initial estimate. The engineers offered these reason for the large differential between expected and actual costs:

1. It is reported that concrete prices in North Central Kansas are twice the price of concrete in other areas.

2. The four phase traffic control nature of the job makes the project much more time consuming with many stops and starts.

3. Small quantities of products. Many specific small quantities of many different products drives up the cost.

4. Contractors are “flush with work” and can be judicious in the ones they choose to bid on. There is less profit margin on smaller projects.

5. The use of curb and gutter on the road project, while making a better road product, drives up the cost of the work.

6. There were an abundance of projects let on the same date. Contractors have to limit the number of projects on which they bid. This resulted in only one contractor bidding on the K-14 project.

The engineers offered for possible ways to proceed.

1. Rebid the project “as is” at a later date with no changes.

2. Eliminate the curb and gutter aspect of the project as well as the storm sewers and rebid with those modifications. This might save $125,000.

3. Apply for additional K-DOT Geometric Improvement Project funds. Due to pre-established deadlines those grants will not awarded until August 2016 with the end result of delaying the project for one year.

4 Tying the existing grant funds into the subsequent grant funds expected for the adjacent project to the south. Once again this would delay construction for a full year.

At this point the engineers fielded a wide variety of questions from the Councilors as they attempted to find a suitable alternative to spending an additional half-million dollars on the K-14 project. Most of the questions were sincere and many of the answers were hard. There appears to be a number of possible ways the costs could be reduced but the chances of those happening are very limited.

The Council approved a bid of $4,900 from White Rock Excavators for the demolition of an unfit structure at 409 West Court. Three bids were submitted and White Rock was the lowest bidder.

Ruth Emerson was on hand to present the next round of Housing Rehabilitation assignments. Six new rehab projects have been selected with one already started. All the demos have been completed. There should be money left over after the current work to do two more houses.

At this point all the items on published agenda had been addressed. The meeting was adjourned and the Work Session was called to order...

Code Enforcement Officer Chris Jones called the Councilor’s attention to the fact that people are parking their campers and recreational vehicles alongside city streets past the deadline of September 30 deadline. He proposed this date be changed to October 31. They directed him to draw up paperwork for them to consider at the next meeting.

Jones said the parking of utility trailers continues to be a growing problem. He urged the Councilors to consider how the interests of the trailer owner and how this affects public safety.

Other News

Beloit, KS 67420, USA