City Council Agenda Report
TO: Mayor Clauzel and Members of the City Council
FROM: Ken Irwin, City Manager
BY: Fernando Ulloa, City Engineer
MEETING DATE: April 4, 2023
ITEM NO: 6.10
SUBJECT: Rejecting all bids for the Salado Creek Trail Phase 1 and direct staff to readvertise at a later date.
RECOMMENDATION
Motion to Reject all bids for the Salado Creek Trail Phase 1 and direct staff to re-advertise at a later date.
BACKGROUND
The City was awarded $1,808,145.00 from the State of California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) for the Salado Creek Trail project. The purpose of this grant is to fund the construction of a new bike path along Salado Creek. This project will promote clean air through the development of the new path and will interconnect with the existing networks of bike paths in the City. In general, the work for Phase I consists of constructing approximately 1,300 linear feet of new asphalt concrete bike and pedestrian trail along American Eagle Avenue from Calvinson Parkway to Sperry Avenue. An existing concrete culvert will be modified to create an undercrossing for the new trail under Sperry Avenue.
ANALYSIS
The Salado Creek Trail Project design was completed in fall 2021 and was subsequently advertised for construction. This project was advertised for construction on the CIP List, the City’s website, and the Patterson Irrigator. The bids for the complete project were previously taken to City Council and rejected based on the cost of the project. City staff, working in conjunction with the design engineer and CNRA, split the project into two phases. Phase I will construct the undercrossing and plant all the trees. Unfortunately, Phase I also came in significantly higher than the grant amount awarded to Patterson.
The City plans to re-advertise, with a clarified scope in hopes of increasing the number of bidders and ultimately receive more competitive pricing for construction.
Bid opening was scheduled for March 15, 2023 and rescheduled March 22, 2023 to answer some last minute technical questions. The City received one bid for this project as follows:
Sinclair General Engineering, Inc. $3,026,025.39
The Engineer’s Estimate for construction was expected to be around $2,396,301. Unfortunately, the cost for construction was higher than anticipated. It is staff’s recommendation that the City Council reject all bids per bidding regulations. This will enable staff to restructure the project bid documents, clarify the scope of the project and review re-bidding options to increase the number of potential bidders. Staff is currently reviewing bid documents and will re-bid at a later date. Staff also has a meeting scheduled with the State of California Natural Resources Agency to ensure compliance with the grant during this process.
FISCAL IMPACT
There is no Fiscal Impact at this time.