15 - COLLEGIATE DRIVE - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item No. 15 memorandum TO: Mayor & City Council FROM: John Godwin, City Manager SUBJECT: COLLEGIATE DRIVE DATE: April 10, 2015 BACKGROUND: In February 2013 the city council approved a contract with a local engineering firm to design improvements to South Collegiate between Clarksville and the creek. At that time, there was some concern that expenditures for the driveway to the police building and for the small parking lot near the trail might not be eligible expenditures based on the original purpose of the bonds that funded phase 1 of Collegiate. We immediately reexamined the bond language and also got an opinion from the city's bond counsel, both of which satisfied us that work in and along the right -of -way of the road was okay. I notified the council of those findings the next morning and we instructed Hayter Engineering to proceed with the design. Once design was complete, we advertised the project for bids and opened four sealed bids on Thursday, May 16. The apparent low bidder was Richard Drake Construction, with a total base bid price of $892,135.78. On May 20 city staff recommended award of this bid. However, at that May meeting the issue of what is and is not eligible was brought up again. The documents that establish how the 2010 CO proceeds can be legally used are the published notice of intent (NOI) and the purpose clause of the city ordinance. Both documents included identical language, as they must, which reads: "For paying all or a portion of the City's contractual obligations incurred in connection with improving and expanding South Collegiate Drive and making improvements to the frontage access for South Collegiate Drive and paying legal, fiscal, engineering and architectural fees in connection with such project. " Both the drive and parking lot are in the frontage of the roadway. Even so, I recommended deleting the $228,957.06 for the driveway, which was far too expensive in any case. STATUS OF ISSUE: The council then discussed its concerns about not widening the bridge, stating that this would become a chokepoint for traffic going from three lanes to two, and then back to three. I pointed out that the third lane was a continuous turn lane only, which we would never build on a bridge in any case (you do not make left turns on a bridge), but the council rejected all bids and the project was indefinitely postponed. The project remains on the CIP that was provided to the council last summer during budget preparation, for calendar year 2015. We