The Prescott City Council met last Monday night with about half the members attending over telephone and the others scattered around the council chambers with staff members at city hall.

The council approved contracts for the two major road and infrastructure construction projects for the summer: Lake and Pearl Streets, as well as borrowing for those projects.

Numbers came in very favorably, significantly under what the city’s engineering firm, Cedar Corp., had predicted. There was some concern that the same company won both bids, but low bidder Total Excavating of River Falls has indicated that it can complete both by the late fall completion date.

“It was very competitive,” Greg Adams of Cedar Corp. said of the bidding.

Four companies bid on the projects, and Adams said that because of COVID-19, it’s a favorable time for municipal projects, as private work has slowed down.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused much of the private construction to shut down (financial uncertainty) and contractors simply do not have enough work and are bidding projects very law,” Adams wrote in a memo to Mayor David Hovel and the city council. “Many contractors I spoke to only have about half of their required total season’s work under contract, and there are not many large projects left to bid. For these reasons, it is my opinion that the city received greatly discounted bids.

For the Lake Street project, Cedar Corp. had predicted the winning bid at just over $1.7 million, so the fact that Total Excavating’s winning bid was 55 percent of that number is a sizeable savings for the city.

The same four companies bid both projects, and Total Excavating was by far the lowest. For Lake Street, Haas Sons of Thorp came in at $1,215,048, while the bid from McCabe Construction of Eau Claire of $1,390,145.27 and A-1 Excavating of Bloomer came in at $1,598,500.

Total Excavating’s low bid for the Pearl Street project was $552,662.85, compared to Cedar Corp.’s pre-bid project estimate of $826,700. McCabe was high bid on that project at $775,116.10.

Council member Bailey Ruona expressed concern with the same company winning both bids.

“Are these projects starting at the exact same time, and do they have the capacity to do both at the same time?” she asked.

“I talked with them about that,” said Adams. “They haven’t expressed any concern over the schedule…They had no doubt they could meet the workload of both projects.”

“I would be hesitant to use the same company on both projects knowing they start on the same date,” said Ruona.

Adams said the start date isn’t as important as the finish date.

“The more critical date is the completion date,” he said. “The completion dates are about Nov. 15, both of them are. We pushed both of them out as far as we could because you get better numbers that way.”

Mayor Hovel asked, “Is there a penalty if they don’t meet the deadline?”

Adams said it’s about $1,000 a day.

Engineering costs for the projects is $118,000.

The bids were approved unanimously.

To pay for the projects, the city approved the sale of $1,975,000 General Obligation Bonds for Street Improvement. The council passed a resolution in January to approve bonding for the project. At that time, the project was predicted to cost $3,070,000, so the final total of under $2 million is a bid savings. The bonding definition is for “various street improvement throughout the city, including but not limited to Pearl Street, south of Lift Station to Hwy. 10, Pearl Street, from Hwy. 10 to Henry Street and Lake Street, from State Trunk 29/35 to north terminus, and related sanitary sewer system, water system and storm sewer improvements.”

Sean Lentz of Ehlers Public Finance Advisors of Roseville, MN, “appeared’ by phone to tell the council that the city maintains a solid credit rating of AA3 from Moody's Investor Service.

“For a city this size, this is an excellent rating,” he said.

The city bond issue had six bidders and UMB Bank of Kansas City was the winning bid at an interest rate of 1.95 percent.