Town disputes increasing water project costs
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ST. IGNATIUS – Last week the St. Ignatius Town Council weighed legal options available to negotiate costs of a water improvement project that have ballooned tens of thousands of dollars beyond original estimates.
The most recent set of over-budget charges include nearly $50,000 in additional expenses that Public Works Director Scott Morton said are mostly unjustified. The council voted to pay some of the expenses, but explore mediation possibilities for others. The project includes construction of new water lines and drilling of water wells and has faced several significant delays since it began in 2008. Officials don’t have an exact tally of the total cost so far, but say it is more than $500,000.
Morton and Councilmember Ray Frey said Great West Engineering, the firm overseeing the project, has never sent a complete set of correct billing to the city. The company also did not heed the city’s warnings and advice about where underground utilities were located, which caused additional costs, damage to existing infrastructure and delays, Morton said.
Another major setback to the project was the digging of an unsuccessful well without the engineering firm first commissioning a hydrological report, according to councilmembers. After the well was drilled, it was discovered that no one has successfully drilled a water well in that part of St. Ignatius for several decades and a new site had to be found. Representatives for the engineering firm claim that town officials were in charge of the process for selecting the unsuccessful well site.
In previous meetings, Great West Engineering placed blame for additional charges with the town’s leadership. The company alleged that officials didn’t respond to requests for information. Morton and Frey have repeatedly said that is false.
Morton said the engineering firm has also been charging the town for more work than has been done.
“This did not take a half-hour, much less three days,” Morton said of one disputed charge. The company’s contract provides for a set number of inspection days, which cost the town approximately $1,000 per day. If the project requires more inspection days the company is supposed to swallow the costs, unless a change order is given, which pushes the costs back on the town. Change orders have abounded in the project. It is a clever business scheme that benefits Great West Engineering, and hurts the cash-strapped town coffers, according to Morton.
“When they decide not to work hard enough, they are still covered,” Morton said. “It only took a few minutes to fix. That didn’t take a day, that didn’t take a half a day … It’s just wrong.”
Town officials will request that in-house employees do part of the work to help cut $17,700 in costs, but there were doubts the engineering firm will allow it.
“They say it has to be ‘engineered,’” Morton said.
Exactly how much more funding the town has to come up with is up in the air. The itemized list of charges provided to City Clerk LeeAnn Gottfried didn’t tally up to the total cost provided by Great West Engineering.
“It looks like we have to come up with $50,000 more,” Gottfried said.
Where the funds will come from is a major question for the town, after officials already had to squeeze its resources to squeak out an additional $38,000 in unforeseen charges in January. Applying for funding from sources suggested by Great West Engineering will cost the town an estimated $8,000, with no guarantee funding will come through and no guarantee the costs won’t balloon more.
The council convened in executive session to hear its legal options for disputing the charges if arbitration efforts don’t go as planned.
“This just ain’t working the way it needs to,” Mayor Charley Gariepy said.
In a telephone interview Great West Engineering Project Manager Craig Pozega said his company has worked diligently to complete the project, which he hopes will be finished in August.
“As with any municipal project such as this, there are things that have arisen during the project,” Pozega said. “When those things have arisen we’ve tried to follow contract protocol.”
Great West Engineering is in daily communication with town officials, he added.
“Everything in the big picture is going really well, and there’s no reason to think the town won’t have some great new infrastructure when we’re done,” Pozega said.
