Topic: Bids on Courthouse
started by: danbelshan
Posted by danbelshan on Oct. 08 2003,12:29 pm
County accepts bids on courthouse workBy Tim Sturrock, Tribune staff writer
Freeborn County Commissioners awarded three carpentry contracts for the new courthouse Tuesday.
The bids for the various tasks were divided among three companies: Kellington Construction of Corcoran, Northern Woodwork of Thief River Falls, and LSI of Minneapolis.
Tim Clark of Adolfson and Peterson, the county's construction-management firm, said the total came in at $763,239 for work budgeted to cost $800,000.
I voted no on these because they were prevailing wage. During discussion I brought this up and had it placed in the minutes why I couldn't vote for these bids. Vote 4 to 1.
Prevailing wage is not mandated by law on this project.
Posted by LisaMarie on Oct. 08 2003,1:11 pm
Sorry to be uninformed, but what's prevailing wage?
Posted by Hanna on Oct. 08 2003,1:20 pm
Prevailing wage is the wage paid to the majority of workers in a given trade. Example: If a company normally pays their carpenter $20 per hour, but the state requires them to pay prevailing wage, that same carpenter will make $25/hour (or whatever the prevailing wage is) for that project. This is common for crews putting in highways that are state projects. The state can mandate if each emloyeed is going to be paid prevailing wage. If this happens, obviously the business has to raise it's estimate to cover such costs. In the case of the court house, the state is not mandating what each employee should make, so there may have been a better alternative than the bid that was accepted.In other words, there may have been a company that could (or would) have done the same work for less money since their employee compensation packages are lower.
4-1.....Gee, that surprises me
Posted by MADDOG on Oct. 08 2003,1:21 pm
Thanks for the information, Dan. It's nice to know that another three contracts left the city. I was informed at one time that the reason the county had to go with prevailing wages because there isn't any contractors capable of taking o a project this large. I'll bet contractors like Al Larson appreciate statements made like that by our elected officials. And then I heard that the county just hired another two jailers? You know, pretty soon the county will be our second largest employer after Mayo.
Posted by fresno on Oct. 08 2003,2:22 pm
with freeborn county, the solution is the problem.
Posted by danbelshan on Oct. 08 2003,3:35 pm
Prevailing wage is mandated when State or Federal dollars are used in a project (eg. construction on I 35, State or Federal buildings). Not mandated (eg. Steele County Jail, our Courthouse, Jail ) all local money
I've been told workers receive a higher wage and also get overtime after 8 hours of work in a day, not the more common overtime after 40 hours of work in a week.
In talking with other Counties I've been told there is no advantage to the taxpayer in using prevailing wage on a project such as our Courthouse.
If the total cost is higher do the architect and construction mangement firm (who are paid on a percent of the cost of the project) benefit at the expense of the taxpayer???
Posted by 1adam12 on Oct. 08 2003,4:09 pm
Dan - How did this latest bid come up - by Gabrielson or A-P? Are they just telling the board what the lowest bid is, recommending approval, requesting any discussion or input? The media doesn't provide much insight (big surprise).
It looks like the other commisioners are just rubber-stamping these deals. Is this what's happening? Are you the only one concerned about this?
I'm not looking for everyone's opinions about the board on this one. I simply want to hear from Dan as to what happened.
Posted by jimhanson on Oct. 08 2003,4:11 pm
Maddog--you are too modest--the County official that stated that the reason for paying prevailing wage was Ron Gabrielsen. He stated that the decision to pay prevailing wage was to "level the playing field--the only way they could get some of the big contractors in here as to offer prevailing wage". The presumption is that:A. There aren't enough local firms capable of doing the work, so we have to bring in outsiders.
B. Outsiders won't come in if they are underbid by local firms, that DON'T pay "prevailing wage", and DON'T have to pay mobilization costs to bring people and machinery hundreds of miles to do the project.
Prevailing Wage is a holdover from the Davis-Bacon Act of the Roosevelt era. I don't have the exact numbers, but prevailing wage in the Minneapolis area (includes Freeborn County) was about $25 an hour for unskilled labor, and about $36 an hour for skilled labor (anyone operating a machine). That's a lot of money, and a huge premium over local pay rates--and YOU KNOW WHO PAYS IT!
Prevailing wage is NOT mandated on this project, as I understand it, Commissioners Mullenbach and Springborg were appointed to study it, and made the decision on their own to pay it. Anyone else have further information?
How much extra is this decision costing? Nobody seems to know. Would it be fair to say an average of at least $10 an hour for each hour of labor? Then add on the extra cost of the wages when figuring FICA, work comp, and other benefits--a function of payroll costs. Then add on the fact that local companies have been frozen out, increasing the costs as the outside companies have to move men and machines in, feed and house them, etc. Finally, the cost-plus arrangement with the architects and production managers.
How many millions of dollars would YOU estimate it cost the taxpayers?
Posted by jimhanson on Oct. 08 2003,4:18 pm
Sorry 1Adam12--your post came in while I was doing mine. Let's hear from Dan.
Posted by hoosier on Oct. 08 2003,4:22 pm
Jim, agree totally. But your estimate of 10 dollars an hour more for each hour of labor, wouldnt that be 10 more for each hour of labor, per man?
Posted by jimhanson on Oct. 08 2003,4:27 pm
Yes, that was what I meant--$10 an our more fore each hour for every man on the job.
Posted by danbelshan on Oct. 08 2003,5:46 pm
AnswersPosted on Oct. 08 2003,3:09:pm--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan -
How did this latest bid come up - by Gabrielson or A-P? Are they just telling the board what the lowest bid is, recommending approval, requesting any discussion or input? The media doesn't provide much insight (big surprise).
It looks like the other commisioners are just rubber-stamping these deals. Is this what's happening? Are you the only one concerned about this?
I'm not looking for everyone's opinions about the board on this one. I simply want to hear from Dan as to what happened.
To answer your questions, including direct quotes from my audio tape:
This work was bid before and the bids came in too high. This was a rebid.
Tim Clark of A&P handed out a sheet of paper at our meeting with the names and amounts of three low bidders in three catagories and recommended their approval as low bids.
The motion was made by Comm. Mullenbach and seconded by Comm. Springborg.
Chr. Behrends: "Comments. I just have one question,were there any local bidders that bid on these packages?"
Tim Clark: "We tried to break it apart to make 'em smaller so some of the smaller local guys could get it but we didn't, we didn't get much _."(couldn't understand that word).
Chr.Behrends: "Any other questions or comments for Tim?"
Belshan:"Tim, ah, we bid this before. Where were we--I can't recall exactly what the bids were, did these come in under? Didn't we bid and we refused to take those?"
Tim Clark:"Yeah, it was over budget, there was a little bit of misunderstanding I think with the some of the scope of work and bid documents. We broke it apart, we could get better coverage, more people bidding, genearate more interest, um cleared up any questions that they might have had ah previously, and rebid it and I think it turned out pretty good."
Belshan: "What was that total before, when we didn't have it broken apart?"
Tim Clark: "Ah, right offhand I don't remember the exact dollars."
I then asked if these were bid prevailing wage items. Tim said they were.
I asked if they had to be prevailing wage and Tim replied,"That was the direction I was given."
The Chair asked for any other questions or comments and there were none. The vote was 4 to 1 to approve. My vote was no, and I asked that it reflect that we didn't have to go prevailing wage on this bid.
Did we have any of the info ahead of time? I didn't. The Chairman asked if there were local bidders, so it doesn't look like he saw the bid info ahead of time either, but you'll need to ask him if he saw any of the bids or bid info before it was passed out at the meeting. I am out of the loop on this, and saw no bids or info other than the one sheet of paper passed out at the meeting for us to approve. The Courthouse grounds committee is currently Chairman Behrends and Vice Chair Mathiason. They don't ask my opinion on Courthouse matters.
Posted by shaker on Oct. 09 2003,12:16 am
Chr. Behrends comment: I have just one question, were there any local bidders that bid on these packages??Now I have one question, If Behrends and Mathiason are on the courthouse grounds committe--SHOULDN'T THEY HAVE SEEN THE BIDS, SHOULDN'T THEY KNOW WHO BIDS, OR DO THEY JUST TAKE TIM CLARKS WORD ON THIS. I guess I would think that they would be takeing an active interest in this process seeing as how they are the ones on the grounds committe.