A resident grilled the township council for a recent decision to agree to a contract with a construction consulting company for the amount of $331,000 for the township complex project.
Resident Roger Boyell levied some caustic comments to the township council for spending more than $300,000 with the construction consulting company for a project that hasn’t even broken ground yet.
“Why now? Why not when construction is near?” Boyell asked. “We’re still several months away.”
Township Manager Scott Carew said that the construction is still months away, that is true, but there are still aspects of the project leading up to the construction that require the experience and expertise of a construction consulting company.
The township doesn’t want to get to a point where its ready to begin the construction, he said, and then bring in a consulting company who says that several other aspects need to be addressed before construction begins. It’s much more prudent to bring them in at this point, he said, pay them hourly so as not to accrue too much costs, and not lose a step in the process.
“Most of the money we pay them will be in the construction phase, but the township will use the consulting company to get ready for that phase,” Carew said. “We all want to make sure that this is done correctly. There are decisions that must be made now and I feel comfortable letting a company give us input that has worked in the township with success in the past.”
Mayor John Button agreed with Carew and said the township needs to work together as a team to make sure that this project is successful and stands for decades to come.
Grayhawk, he said, has had tremendous success in the township in the past.
In other township news:
The bids for the fields project have been delayed by one week, Carew said, as the township and recreation groups brought their bid specifications back in to include two other types of artificial turf.
Carew said when the bids were originally published they only contained one type of artificial turf for the fields. Three more were included in the new bids, he said, which should save thousands of dollars on the final project.
This will bring in a larger pool of bidders and thus make the project more competitive, Carew said.
