Seaford City Council approves a bid for a new Parks and Recreation building, although costs are likely to exceed the budgeted amount.
Council members appropriated $500,000 in this year’s budget to pay for the new building, to be paid for by taking out a 20-year loan. At a meeting last week, they learned that the lowest of the three bids came in at $515,000.
While that overage is not overwhelming in terms of the project’s total budget, it also uses up all of the contingency budget, leaving no flexibility for unforeseen costs if plans have to be changed or if inflation causes material costs to rise. That was a concern for Vice-Mayor Dan Henderson.
“I just wanted to caution everybody that that's not the end of it,” he said. “That's probably not the all-in cost.”
City Manager Charles Anderson acknowledged that Henderson had a point, and that cost overruns were probably inevitable.
“The vice mayor is 100% correct,” Anderson told council members. “There will be some things along the way that are unknown, so there will be some overages. We'll work very hard to keep them to a minimum.”
But, he added, more money for contingencies could be added into the loan when the city applies for it.
“By the time we would get the loan, this building would be well along its way and we would be pretty confident that we wouldn't have any more change orders,” he explained.
Council unanimously approved to award the construction contract to Green Diamond Builders for $515,744. Construction could begin as soon as this summer and is expected to take about six months.
