Politics & Government

Council Approves Low Bidder for Public Safety Building

The groundbreaking is set for July 21

Montville Police Lt. Leonard Bunnell, a member of the Public Safety Building Committee, stood at the lectern in the Montville Town Council chamber on Monday and talked about the committee and the project.

"When it works, it is going to work because of their efforts," he said, speaking of the committee generally. Of committee Chairman Jack Platt and Marcia Vlaun, who has acted to date as project manager, Bunnell said, "Without them, we would not be where we are now."

Bunnell said it was important that the council vote be unanimous.

Find out what's happening in Montvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

And it was.

The Montville Town Council unanimously approved A. Secondino & Sons, Inc., as the contractor for the Public Safety Building on Monday night.

Find out what's happening in Montvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The vote brings the planning and design phase of the project to a close and opens the construction phase.

The $5.19 million contract includes a number of "alternates," parts of the project that were broken off from the base bid, and bid on separately by the contractors. One of the alternates, for instance, is personnel duty lockers. Another is a sidewalk along Route 32 in front of the Public Safety Building. 

Before the vote, Platt briefly discussed the bid process, and then Vlaun, who is also Montville's town planner, presented the package of award-of-contract recommendations to the council.

She went over some of the points in the document, and answered questions from the council. She stressed that A. Secondino has had a good working relationship with Kaestle-Boos, the architecture firm the town is using, and that the contractor has an "impressive" construction history.

The project is on time and on budget, and the bid is within projected costs, with a contingency budget of $192,000.

"We are working within the numbers," she said, "and I think we have a good margin there."

The people of Montville voted in November in favor of a $6.5 million bond for the project. The town received $700,000 in grants, and so the bond issue was for $5.8 million, Vlaun said.

The town is wrestling with the state over a traffic light that the state has required at the entrance to the public safety building, which will be beside Montville Hardware.

Brush cutting on the northern edge of the public safety building should improve sight lines, Vlaun said, and she is hoping to convince the state that the traffic light is no longer needed.

"I've been a real bulldog on this," she said.

The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for June 21 at 9 a.m. The actual work on the site is scheduled to begin Aug. 1, and finish Feb. 1, 2013.

The building, 17,000 square feet, will include space for police operations; a regional dispatch center for police, fire and EMS; evidence storage; interview space; a community room where civic groups can hold meetings and police can hold training sessions; a gym; and detention facilities for adult males, adult females and juveniles.

Councilors were not only unanimous in their voting, but also in their praise for the work of the public safety committee.

Vice Chairman Ellen Hillman thanked the committee for its work. "We're going to have a beautiful building when we're done," she said.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here