(12/10) Commissioner John Cutshall let out a laugh as he read over the proposed bid numbers submitted to the Town for the construction of the new Town Hall. His statement: "well we are certainly not going to be spending that much," summed up the feelings of Burgess Heath Barnes and his fellow Commissioners.
The lowest bid, covering all aspects of the construction of the new Town Hall, came in at $1,600,000, and was submitted by Woodsboro resident and home builder Joel Rensberger. The highest bid, $2,059,800 was submitted by Keller Construction of Frederick.
Barnes, who was on a cruise when the bids were forwarded to him, said that upon seeing the costs, walked back to the ships bar to get a good stiff drink. "I honestly was not expecting these numbers," he said.
When the town entered the process several years back to build the town’s first Town Hall, Barnes and the Town Commissioners were prepared to spend somewhere in the order of $800,000. With that sum in mind, Barnes successfully negotiated a $400,000 grant with then Governor Hogan’s office to help cover 50% of the cost of the construction.
The grant was officially approved in the FY-23 State budget, and in spite of current State budget cutbacks which are affecting key priorities, such as the widening of Route 15, Barnes told the Council that the State money for the Town Hall is not in jeopardy as it is prior year funding. "However," Barnes said, "we need to spend it by the end of 2025, or we will lose the money for good."
"Unfortunately,’ Barnes said, "we can’t ask the state to send us the money until the Town Hall is completed. So the longer it takes us to find a way to reduce the construction cost to a point we can afford, the longer it will take to start actual construction, and if we delay too long, we risk losing the grant outright."
The original plan, according to Barnes, was to borrow $400,000 from a bank to cover the cost of the construction not covered by the grant. Barnes said that the mortgage payment for that loan would be approximately $3,500, which the town could handle. However, Cutshall said that accepting even the lowest bid, under today’s prevailing interest rates, would result in the town being faced with a $12,000 monthly mortgage payment, which, he said, was beyond the reach of the town.
While Barnes said the town could tap into its $1million General Fund to cover the additional $800,000, he, and the Commissioners said that was a non-starter as that would leave the town with nothing to cover unforeseen expenses.
As the Council shook its head in frustration, Rensberger stepped to the podium and offered the Council some sage advice and background on the numbers in his bid and how the town could go about reducing the costs.
Rensberger started off by noting that the current design that his bid was based on included a basement. "If you eliminate the basement, and instead build the hall on a simple concrete slab you reduce building cost by $100,000." He continued: "The architect has the building being an all brick building," and "I don’t know how wedded you are to that, but if you opt to only have the face of the building in brick, and the rest in vinyl siding, you can cut out an another significant cost."
Rensberger also pointed out that the current design has an attic, which added $50,000 to the building sprinkler costs: "If you don’t need an attic, then you can reduce costs in not only materials in building it, but in the design of the sprinkler system."
Rensberger went on to note several other items in the design, which while looking nice on paper, significantly added to the cost of the building, and suggested that he would support the town in doing ‘value engineering’, such as identifying more cost-effective lighting fixtures and flooring options.
As Rensberger ticked off areas where ‘value engineering’ could reduce the cost of the hall, the Town Council clearly began to recover from the shock of the initial estimates, and focused on how to reduce their expectations so the Town was still able to move forward with construction.
After a closed door meeting, the Council agreed to sign a memorandum of Understanding with Sanbower Builders of Myersville that if they could make recommendation for changes in the current design that would get the cost of building the town hall down to $1 million, the Town would sign a contract with them to build it.
Barnes said Sanbower was chosen because they are a commercial builder and turned in the best-detailed proposal of the commercial builders.
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