Board of Aldermen 8-11-2020 Page 14
Alderwoman Kelly
| hope to put this to bed after this | know we have had a rigorous discussion. My request would just be that
we think about timing of contracts and when they need to be approved so we don’t get under the gun like
this. One of the Alderman pointed out that we had from Friday until now to ask questions but in the Mayor’s
own remarks he said we have been working on this for over a year. So this could have been brought to us
a month earlier or give us a little bit of time to make sure that we know what we are approving.
President Wilshire
Well you know Director Cummings did send out a memo and this did go to Finance. So | don’t think we
have done anything lax. The information was available and he did send something out in July which was
only 2 % weeks ago. So in his defense, | think he did what he should have done. If wanted more from him,
we could have simply asked and | am sure he would have been more than happy to give you any
information you need. | do understand that if we are supposed to vet something, we vet something and we
should be doing that. But this went through Finance. Alderman Dowd?
Alderman Dowd
| have been doing this kind of work with the City for 20 years and very simply the process is when we have
a project, we hire an architect, the architect determines the work that needs to be done. Then your
construction manager goes out and solicits bids for each piece of the work and that’s a contract. And any
body that is on the Joint Special has seen a number of these already on just the Fairgrounds Project. We
approved that contract and that’s what they are going to do the work for. When all of those are added up,
and by the way when we first do all those estimates, the construction manager is going to determine what
they think it is going to cost to do the architect's work. They make sure it is a close to what is going to
happen as possible.
Then when they go out for bids, the bids come in and has been the case in the school projects for most
every time, the bids come in in conglomerate underneath what we had to bond for and what the cost of the
project was going to be. So when all of those bids are in and they say they are going to do the work for that
price, then we can go out with a guaranteed maximum price. And as Attorney Bolton said, now if they start
doing the work and it goes up or down in the process, you have to do a change order and that has to be
approved by whoever has responsibility for that project. In the schools, it is the Joint Special, alright? And
they can’t do anything without that signed change order. And the only time that it would cause a major
thing to come back to the Board of Aldermen would be if all of a sudden when we add everything up it’s
over the amount that we have approved for bonding. Int this case, we are under the amount we approved
for bonding. So when they went out to get the work and they got all the bids it came in less than we
thought. So there should be no issues there, there’s no change in work because the architect, whoever the
Committee is that’s seeing this project, the architect designed what needed to be done. The construction
manager went out and got bids and all the bids are in and signed it is less than we expected.
President Wilshire
Are you all set Alderman Dowd?
Alderman Dowd
| hope so.
President Wilshire
Ok the Motion is to approve the contract change from Martini Northern relative to the guaranteed maximum
price. Further discussion on that motion? Seeing none, would the Clerk please call the roll?
