The City of Meridian wants to hire a demolition contractor to demolish demolished buildings across the city.
At a meeting on Tuesday, community development director Craig Hitt asked the city council to scrap an agenda item awarding a demolition contract for 12 buildings and to re-bid for 29 buildings. Although five companies submitted bids for the contract, three applications were incomplete and the other two exceeded the estimated amount.
“We got the offers today and we got five offers,” he said. “Three of the offers were within the range we expected, but none of those three packages were complete.”
Over the past year, contracts have been awarded to demolish dozens of derelict buildings as part of a citywide effort to combat derelict and abandoned properties. At a public hearing on 31 properties’ address in February, Hitt told the council there was a process the city had to go through to condemn a property and that community development had numerous other structures in the works.
Hwy 80 trunk line
The city council also on Tuesday advanced the second phase of the Highway 80 trunk line project required under the consent decree. The council voted unanimously to award the $1,009,089 project to Hemphill Construction Company.
Public works director David Hodge said the project will involve the replacement of about 1,500 feet of pipe that is likely more than 50 years old.
“This is 100 percent consent decree work,” he said.
Over time, Hodge said, hydrogen sulfide will corrode the 24-inch concrete pipe until it eventually collapses.
“It just collapses from top to bottom,” he said. “That’s what happened.”
Storm and Sewer annual contract
At Tuesday’s meeting, the council was also asked to approve a $9,761,460 annual storm and sewer rehabilitation contract with Hemphill Construction Company.
Hodge said the contract would allow the city to create work orders for necessary repairs to the sewage and stormwater infrastructure without having to tender for each individual project. Although the bid amount was over $9 million, the actual cost to the city would depend on the size and complexity of the task orders assigned by the city.
The first place Hemphill would work is in the medical district, Hodge said. The city has plans to pave the streets through the medical district in the near future, but needs to fix stormwater and sewer pipe issues before applying fresh asphalt.
“Before we pave, we want to take responsibility and fix the serious deficiencies in the storm and sewer lines,” he said.
Some of the work to be done could be paid for from consent decree funds, Hodge said, but some would also have to be paid for by the city.
A motion by Councilor George Thomas to approve the treaty died for lack of a second. Council President Dwayne Davis invited the city to bring the contract to a working session for discussion and attempt to get it approved at a future council meeting.
“We had one proposal, but we didn’t have a second,” Davis said. “What we can do is discuss it further later in a working session and put it on the next agenda.”
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