Public Safety Building Committee Moves into Next Phase

The Public Safety Building Committee has chosen the apparent low bidder for the public safety building, and is passing along its recommendation to the Town Council, to be considered at the council's next meeting.

A Secondino & Son., Inc., put in a bid of $5.13 million for the project. The next lowest bid was from Rudolph Netsch Construction Co. Inc, at $5.48 million. Sarazin General Contractors had the highest bid, at $6.3 million.

The committee accepted alternate plans for:

• Personnel duty lockers - $700
• A sidewalk along Route 32 - $23,000
• A site sign wall - $29,500
• Acoustical panels - $6,000

“Alternates” are parts of the project that were broken off from the base bid, and bid on separately by the contractors. The committee could – and still can – choose alternates to be added, as long as the additions don’t run the project over budget.

Other alternates that could be considered are:

• A storage building -$64,000
• Security cameras - $35,000
• An impound lot - $134,000
• Mirrors for the fitness room - $1,040
• Site plantings - $18,000
• and a tower camera - $1,800

The low cost of the lockers – Secondino bid $700, while most of the others were about $20,000 – gave some members of the committee pause.

“If someone has made an error,” said Marcia Vlaun, “It’s perfectly within our right to accept it.

“You really could spend a lot of time trying to read the tea leaves, but I really don’t think it’s worth it,” she said. “People bid what they bid.”

Committee Chairman Jack Platt said he’d “just hate to see cardboard lockers show up.”

Vlaun said the contractors all had been given clear specifications for all the alternates. “You’re within your right to accept (the number),” she said, “and you’d be silly not to.”

At Vlaun’s suggestion, the committee set up a subcommittee of Bill Bucko, John MacNeil and David Jetmore that has the authority to approve spending to certain limits, should the contractor find himself in need of something.

“I am about to step out of the process,” Vlaun said. “You need a change of command, and you need someone authorized to step in. You need to name somebody on the committee who is authorized to do it.”