Posted on October 17, 2017
By Ian Thompson, Daily Republic
The City Council tossed out the only bid to dredge Suisun’s harbor and Whispering Bay late Tuesday night and will put the project back out to bid in hopes of getting more bids from dredging companies.
City Councilwoman Jane Day led the call to reject the bid from The Dutra Company, saying that rebidding the project will give the potential bidders more time to examine the project and decide if they want to bid on it.
This means that the city will have to push building up the levees on Pierce Island to give it the capacity to take dredging spoils to the fall of 2018.
Two tentative schedules for the dredging itself could see the dredging happen in the fall of 2018, right after the levees are built up, or delayed a year to the fall of 2019.
The city got a shock last month when the sole initial bid by Dutra came in at more than $5 million, well in excess of the $2.9 million that the city estimated it would cost. The city has budgeted $2.1 million at present.
The council was handed three options for dredging: Reject the bid, approve a modified bid of $3.3 million that included only building up levees on half of Pierce Island, or not taking any action until the council’s Dec. 19 meeting.
Councilman Mike Hudson spoke out against the idea of accepting the $3.3 million bid since the main option for funding what the city budgeted for the dredging, and the $3.3 million cost, would decimate the city’s emergency reserve fund, cutting it from $2.5 million to $241,700.
“It is a big mistake to cut down our reserves,” Hudson said via teleconference from Tulare.
The cost of the dredging project is considerably higher than when the channels were dredged last in 2008 because Suisun City did not have to do any work to prepare Pierce Island to give it the capacity to take dredging spoils from dredging of the waters by the Suisun City marina and Whispering Bay.
Public Works Director Tim McSorley was directed by the council to rework the bid in an effort to cut down the cost.
Source: Daily Republic
