Oglesby bridge project
hits another bump in the road City administrator Sue
McLaughlin told the council Tuesday evening that bids had been
received and opened for the Oglesby bridge demolition project. She
then asked city engineer Darren Forgy to discuss the bids with the
council.
Forgy said he was surprised and shocked by the dollar figures in
the bids. All the bids came in substantially higher than he feels
they should have. Forgy explained that as city engineer, he has
estimated what the cost should be for the project. At other meetings
Forgy has explained that engineering estimates are done using a
database of information from the Illinois Department of
Transportation.
He said he didn't know why the bids had all come in too high, but
because of this he could not recommend to the city that they accept
any of them.
Forgy said he did not believe it would be out of line for the
council to instruct him to contact the low bidder, discuss their
pricing and possibly negotiate the price down to a reasonable
amount.
He said other options the city might look at are rejecting all
the bids and rebidding the project as part of a "bundle." He said,
for example, that if the Oglesby bridge project would be bundled
with the Pulaski Street project, bidders might come down on the
price so as not to lose the bigger Pulaski Street project.
Anderson asked what that would do to the timeline for the
project. She expressed some frustration that this has been an
ongoing issue for years now, and she wants to see it finished and
over with.
Forgy said he felt they could still target a September completion
date.
O'Donohue asked if bundling the project would guarantee a lower
price; and Forgy said it would not.
In the end, McLaughlin asked Forgy to go ahead and investigate
the city's options, which right now appear to be either proceeding
with the current bids, rebidding the project or bundling it in with
something else.
City rejects request for crosswalk at Castle Manor
Mayor Keith Snyder introduced a request from Tim Searby of Castle
Manor for a crosswalk from Castle Manor to the Wal-Mart parking lot.
McLaughlin told the council she had discussed this with the
appropriate department heads, and they had concluded that to grant
this request would leave the city open to liability suits.
It was explained that the crosswalk would not be accompanied with
a traffic control device such as a stop sign or light. The city
would have no means of controlling the traffic.
In that case, the crosswalk could do more harm than good because
pedestrians might have a false sense of security and safety when
entering the walk.
Discussion included the possibility of putting the crosswalk
farther to the south, beyond the second entry into the Wal-Mart
parking lot.
Snyder mentioned that perhaps when Brinshore Development builds
the Plowfield Square housing development, they would put in a
sidewalk south of Castle Manor.
John Lebegue, building and zoning officer, was asked if he knew
anything about this, and he responded that he recalled there will be
a sidewalk connecting to the existing walk at Castle Manor.
It was then discussed that the pedestrian crossing could be
incorporated into the Brinshore project. The result would be that
residents of Castle Manor would have to walk farther to cross the
street, but they would be in a safer location.
For the time being, the request by Searby was set aside and will
not be considered in the immediate future, though new options may
make it possible for the city to accommodate the request sometime
down the road.
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City to go paperless
McLaughlin and Susan Gehlbach, city clerk, talked briefly Tuesday
evening about taking the city paperless for their meetings.
Currently, the city runs copies of all talking points for
meetings of the committee of the whole as well as creating a Monday
meeting packet with numerous pages. McLaughlin said that considering
that all the aldermen have been provided laptops by the city,
perhaps the documents could be transmitted to the laptops, and
aldermen could review the materials via their laptops.
Gehlbach told the council that this would reduce the workload on
her and her staff as they prepare for weekly meetings, and it would
save money.
O'Donohue expressed that it was a good idea, but that some
aldermen might need a tutorial on how to access the documents and
how to work paperless.
It was decided that this is something the city does want to try
and will work toward that end in the future.
O'Donohue will explore option for new sound system
The city has been having a great deal of trouble with the sound
system they use in council chambers. On Tuesday evening during the
committee of the whole, it was not working at all.
It had been mentioned in a previous meeting that the system was
also used by Comcast in recording the Monday night meetings. Because
of this, the city was hoping that Comcast would pitch in on the bill
for a new system.
However, McLaughlin told the council Tuesday night that Comcast
has done all they are going to do. She said that according to their
contract with the city, the company is only required to assure that
their system is working properly.
She said the connection from the video and audio recording
equipment to the city's system is in good working order, and that is
all Comcast has to worry about.
O'Donohue shared with the aldermen some research he had done on
the subject. He qualified his statements by saying he was not
recommending anything, but he had come up with an alternative that
would cost a great deal less than the wireless microphone system
that had been mentioned at previous meetings.
O'Donohue passed out information regarding a system that would do
both audio and video recording and save it to a computer hard drive.
He said it would involve a machine sitting in the center of the
council floor. The machine would be voice-sensitive so that when a
person is talking, the camera would rotate to focus on that person
for video. He said it would voice-record all the conversations going
on, but when multiple people were speaking, the camera would
probably focus in on whoever was talking the loudest.
While the machine O'Donohue spoke about would be more than
adequate for making a record of the meetings, it was also mentioned
that there is a need for some type of speakers so that guests in the
gallery could also hear the conversations.
In the end, O'Donohue was asked to continue investigating what he
had brought to the council and get back to them with more details.
[By NILA SMITH] |