The bid to construct a new bridge over Fall Creek has been awarded to Twin K. Construction of Helenwood.
The company put in a bid of $687,791 for the project, the lowest of five submitted bids. The Smithville Mayor and Board of Aldermen called a special meeting Monday night to award the bid and expedite the construction of the bridge, which has been closed since October, when a Tennessee Department of Transportation Evaluation Report found it to be unsafe.
The city’s engineering firm, Professional Engineering Services from Sparta, recommended that Twin K’s bid be accepted. With all costs, including permits, inspection fees, obtaining right of way, engineering, design, and temporary construction easements puts the total project at $778,655.
The city will be required to pay 25 percent of that total, or $196,625.
Kyle Hazel of Professional Engineering Services attended the meeting, telling the mayor and aldermen that he will send the paperwork out immediately, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Tennessee Department of Transportation will have the project approved in four to six weeks. Twin K will have 180 days to construct the new bridge.
“We did specify 180 calendar days from the date of notice to proceed,” Hazel said. “That is a fair and reasonable time frame knowing the season we will be entering during that 180 days. If we send this out tomorrow to TDOT to start drafting a contract to be signed by the mayor within the next week, then hopefully by the middle of September we will have notification from Nashville that the TDOT Commissioner has signed the contract between the City of Smithville and TDOT. We will then have a preconstruction meeting. The contracts will be executed at that time between the city and the contractor, a notice to proceed will be issued to the contractor, and they will be expected to go to work immediately. From the time we issue them a notice to proceed at the preconstruction meeting, that is when that 180 day time clock will start ticking.”
While the State’s Bridge Grant Program will provide funding for the project, the city’s percentage of the bill will be significantly more than initially thought.
“When I asked for confirmation from TDOT officials, I received information that wasn’t necessarily pleasing,” Hazel said. “They said there had been a $70,000 reduction in the grant fees or grant balance due to a federal bridge project that was done in this county many years ago. When TDOT manages a project for you as a local government, they sometimes take five or six years to close out a project. For example, the bridge over Smith Fork on the Alexandria to Dismal Road was a federally funded project. There is another one in the Dry Creek area. There could be others that I am not aware of. But under the Federal Bridge Grant Program, 80 percent is funded. Sixteen percent can be matched under this bridge grant balance that you are using to build this bridge, and four percent is paid for by the local government. When TDOT closes out these projects many years later, they come in and settle up their books, and they reach into whichever account that payment needs to come from and they take it. Unfortunately, in this case that is what they did late in the last fiscal year. They got $70,000 from the bridge grant fund. They have the authority to do that. The bridge grant monies that are available to apply to this project total $582,000, but in order to fully fund it, the City of Smithville needs to match the 75 percent grant with 25 percent in local funds to the tune of $200,000.”
The aldermen agreed that there was no recourse but to pay the 25 percent of the cost of a new structure.
