by Geoff Fox

Town officials opened five bid packets at the end of the June town meeting last Tuesday, June 9, to award the bids for replacing the stairs that lead from Joseph Hancock Park to the Western Maryland Rail Trail and for roof repair for the pavilions in the parks.

Town Manager Mike Faith said all bids were received by the deadline and both projects will be paid using grant money.

Only one bid was received for the stairs – contractor REM entered a $20,500 bid. The town has a $49,115 Project Open Space grant for the project.

Faith said the project could possibly require a permit and he would have to contact the Park Service to determine if they have any plans or engineering for the staircase.

If a permit is pulled, Faith said there would have to be engineering associated with the project, which could require a change order.

“We got $29,000 still to play with, so we should be fine,” he said.

Faith said he’d like to spend all the money and not leave anything on the table.

That lone bid was unanimously approved.

Faith also opened four bids to repair the roofs of the pavilions in Joseph Hancock Park and Widmeyer Park.

In the RFPs the town put out, contractors were told it would be like for like, meaning if the roof was metal, the new roof would be metal.

Those bids ranged from $40,000 to $198,000.

The bids were – Norris Building Contractors with a bid for $40,425, Ruff Roofers with a bid of $128,351, Colossal Contracting at $198,250, and RAM Enterprise at $51,720.

The Project Open Space grant money available for that project is $59,220.

Both Norris and RAM are local contractors. Ruff is from Baltimore and Colossal is from Annapolis.

When looking at the roofs, the Widmeyer Park pavilions are all metal roofing while the Joseph Hancock Park pavilion is shingled.

Mayor Roland Lanehart, Jr. said there could be some lumber replacement needed at the pavilions, but there should be enough in the grant money if that needs to happen.

The problem is some bids did include that stipulation and others did not.

Councilman Josh McCusker said there could be a change order if those changes need to happen.

Town Attorney Ed Kuczynski said if a bid was incomplete, officials would have to reject the bids and if the RFP was incomplete, they could reject those and resubmit with clarification.

Kuczynski said officials couldn’t go to each contractor they have questions with and ask for clarification when the others did everything correctly.

The answers from those two contractors might make them more competitive and get the bid instead.

Faith said when he drew up the original RFPs, he tried to tell the contractors what the town wanted without boxing them in, emphasizing they were the professional, the amount of the grant, and to look at the pavilions to tell the town what they need.

McCusker said if the low bidder saw a board that needed changed could have put that in his bid, but when removing the roof and find an underlying problem, could there be a change order.

Because of a large discrepancy between the lowest and highest bids, the town could look to their ordinance on bids and use the local preference section.

Councilman David Kerns suggested tabling the discussion about the pavilion bids which would allow officials to look at each more closely.

Officials agreed and tabled the discussion until the July town meeting.