Big Money for Big Construction

The Moscow City Council voted on a bid for the construction of a new city shop building this past week. It’s desperately needed, but the price tag is eyebrow-raising. Let’s dive into their discussion and see if we can find out why!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. It’s a week after Thanksgiving, and the winter festivities show no sign of stopping. I had a great time at the city’s Light Up the Season parade this past Thursday evening, and I hope you were able to make it as well.

That said, the wheels of local government churn ever onward, and we’ve got a meeting to get through. With Mayor Bettge absent, councilor Gina Taruscio again took his place to direct proceedings this past week. The meeting began with a public comment from Joanne Meniche, requesting an update on the city’s plan for public outreach regarding the replacement of the East City Park stage.

This was followed by the annual report from the Historic Preservation Commission, led by commission chair, Nels Reese. Nels spoke on a number of different architectural points of interest, but the main focus of the report was the recipients of this year’s Orchid awards, given to those people and organizations who have done outstanding work in the name of historic preservation in Moscow.

There were three of them given this past year: one to Cynthia King for her outstanding public service as part of the commission, one to the Latah Historical Preservation Society, for completing the first phase of the windows replacement project at the McConnell Mansion, and one to Evan and Leslie Wilson for their painting and restoration work on their house, known by Nels as the House of Seven Gables.

Next up, a somewhat more dense item. Bonnie Denver, a human resource manager for the city, presented a resolution on recent personnel policy updates. The city put together a comprehensive personnel policy back in 2022, and they have been making small updates to it ever since. This latest set of updates included the addition of new paramedic and firefighter positions, changes and updates based on federal regulations, formalizing internal practices, and some changes to position titles (like the change from city supervisor to city administrator).

The specifics of those updates included overtime requirements for firefighters and paramedics, introductory and work period updates, updates to parental leave, holidays, vacation, sick leave, health benefits, equal employment, termination, rest and meal breaks, bereavement leave, and new policies related to inclement weather and emergency closures, brought on by the unexpected natural gas shortage which happened last winter. These updates were approved unanimously by the Moscow City Council.

And now, the big ticket item of the meeting. Cody Riddle presented the bids which the city has received as regards the construction of a new city shop facility. As Riddle stated, this is not an upgrade to the current building, but rather a desperately needed remediation and revival. The current city shop was constructed in 1968 and is ailing badly, with restrooms being inadequate, work spaces being unsafe, and also this: (show video of city shop flooding)

Aside from the deleterious status of the current building, the city needs more shop space anyway in order to accommodate for the expansion of its fleet in recent years. Thus the project that the city put up for bid included the construction of a new separate city shop building of 18,800 square feet, with alternatives to do recladding of the existing shop building and the construction of a new dry materials storage shed, all on the same property.

The lowest bid the city received came from Wellens General Contractors for $7,248,000. This was about $1 million more than the design professionals who helped put the project together had initially predicted. We turn to the city council for their discussion.

Sandra Kelly asked about the possible influence of tariffs on prices and whether the city had a plan B in place for the shop replacement. Staff answered that locking in the price for this bid would ensure that the project would not get any more expensive in the future, and that it would be better to do so now, as it was unlikely to get any cheaper.

Julia Parker expressed her concerns about the cost, particularly it being so far above what had been anticipated by the designers. This sentiment was echoed in stronger terms by Drew Davis, who in particular expressed frustration with the estimates and the estimators. While acknowledging the city’s need for the new building, he wanted some sort of resolution for the design discrepancies.

Hailey Lewis brought up the fact that $3 million in ARPA funds were in play to help cover the cost of the new building, and Gina confirmed that even with the unexpected price, the building would be paid for with no additional cost to the taxpayer. Unlike the roughly $10 million police station from some years back, the new city shop wouldn’t result in a new city levy of any kind. 

There was still some back and forth about the price discrepancy itself, but ultimately, a motion to approve the acceptance of the bid from Wellens General passed 5-1, with Julia Parker being the only dissenting vote. So, it looks like the city will be getting a new shop facility, but I’m sure you’re still asking, how does a project like this get so expensive?

The construction agreement between the city and the contractors is well over 1,700 pages long and so does little to help explain the cost. Riddle mentioned that the high price was due at least in part to steel work and retaining wall needs, but neither of these things do much to explain the price in detail. I suppose it’s all well and good if the city had budgeted for it, but they too were in part surprised by the price.

This concern was first brought up by Sandra Kelly at the city administrative committee meeting on November 25th, ahead of this council meeting. Their discussion at the time focused on the lack of local contractors who were able to build at the scale of the city’s needs, resulting in reaching out to larger contractors further and further away from the city.

With public building construction being a relative rarity in Moscow’s specific geographic location, the city apparently doesn’t have as accurate market information as you might get elsewhere. Steel prices and steel building in particular are hard to estimate, with the cost of those fluctuating more inconsistently. Belknap’s assessment therefore, was that the price might be frustrating, but it’s what we got.

Unfortunately, none of that information helps explain the price itself, and until the project gets going, we won’t really know where the expenses truly lie. Perhaps the city would be more willing to second guess a project like this if it were not nearly as urgently needed as the city shop is, but that is not the case. If Pullman’s downtown project and its related snarls are any indicator, however, there may be more of these sorts of unpredictable situations coming down the pipeline. 

The most important thing a citizen of Moscow can do in this case is to stay engaged and informed on the many projects going on, and if you happen to have the skill set, take a crack at reading some of those contract documents. We’ll do our best to help keep you informed on the latest, so that you can do your best to make your voice heard. As always, we’ll have the relevant links posted with this video, and if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson with the Moscow Minutes. See you next time!