Despite some debate about costs expected to come in six figures over what the city had budgeted, the Whitefish City Council voted earlier this week 3-2 to award a contract for the city’s Viaduct Improvement Project to a Bellingham, Washington-based construction company.
The Viaduct Improvement Project has been identified for years in long-range planning documents produced by the city as a key component in connecting the city’s north side with the downtown area to its south.
In describing the Viaduct Improvement Project to the council during the March 17 hearing on the contract, Public Works Director Craig Workman said it involves the movement of protective jersey barriers to expand the walkways on either side of the viaduct roadway to create 10-foot-wide multi-use paths, landscaping on the north and south sides of the viaduct, improved lighting on both sides of the viaduct road, and the removal of both a southbound slip lane from the west side of the roadway at Railway Street and an associated porkchop concrete embankment.
On its invitation to bid, the city stated that notice to proceed with the project would be given on March 31, 2025 and that project work must be substantially completed by June 20, 2025.
Workman told the council that the city had been working with the engineering firm WGM group for three years on project plans. The city had budgeted $700,000 in Fiscal Year 2025 for the project based on an engineer’s estimate of $702,912, but of the two bids the city received, the lowest was $874,314. That bid, from Razz Construction out of Bellingham, Washington, was 24% above budget, whereas a local bid from Knife River Construction was for over $1 million, or about 49% above the engineer’s estimate.
“I think we just kind of missed the mark a little bit on the estimate,” Workman said. “But again, you know this is a tricky one because it’s not standard road construction or utility construction, or you know, vertical building construction. There’s a number of different elements that we didn’t have a lot of comparables to.”
In a staff report to the council in which staff recommended giving the bid to Razz Construction, Workman said that the project will likely come in about $250,000 over its established budget once the costs of engineering and city-provided street lights are taken into account. With a $2.9 million cash reserve in the city’s street fund, which City Manager Dana Smith said was relatively high, both she and Workman agreed that the city will be able to absorb the extra costs without significant impact to the street fund at this time.
Although Workman shared that he thinks the price of the bid is high, he told the council that he doesn’t think the price will be going down if the city ever wants this project completed. That view was echoed by both Councilor Andy Feury and Councilor Frank Sweeney. And Smith, the city manager, noted to the council that taking another attempt at producing alternate plans would bring on additional costs for engineering consultation.
Some members of the council were skeptical that there was no way to bring the price down. Mayor John Muhlfeld suggested that they might be able to cut certain components like the lighting and landscaping out of this contract, and then try to look locally for contractors and complete the project in two phases.
“I think we’re going to run into a buzzsaw statutorily there as well,” Workman said, adding that any time the city does a project for more than $80,000 it has to go through the public bidding process. “Part B of that, is you cannot break—now that we’ve established a project—I don’t think legally we can break it into individual components that are less than $80,000.”
Muhlfeld emphasized that he wasn’t calling for the city to try and evade the public bidding process in any way, but rather to try and re-bid the project separately along the lines of some of its different components. Councilor Steve Qunell agreed with the idea, saying that the landscaping and lighting are the aesthetic pieces that are really important.
“Moving the jersey barriers is important, but I don’t think we should pay $850,000 for those three things together,” Qunell said.
Councilor Andy Feury rejected that idea, saying that there are economies of scale for contractors that would affect the bid amounts and that breaking it down into individual pieces would inevitably cost more money. He also said construction and material costs are not going to go down over time.
“We’ve been kicking this thing down the road for how many years now? A very long time. It’s been in our downtown masterplan for a very long time. Is it more than I’d like to spend for it right now? Yeah. But to not do it? And to not move the jersey barriers, quite frankly is probably the biggest safety issue that we face on that viaduct,” Feury said. “If you watch people on one wheels, with strollers, with bicycles, with pedestrians, all trying to get over that viaduct … I drive over that thing every day, multiple times, and I see it all the time, and I’ve said this every time we’ve talked about this, that it has to happen. We need a bigger shared path on both sides. It needs to be done and it needs to be done sooner or later or we’re going to have a problem, I guarantee you.”
When it came time to vote on awarding the contract, Feury, Sweeney and Councilor Ben Davis voted in favor, with Davis and Sweeney both indicating that they were also voting to award the contract despite their issues with the elevated cost. Councilor Steve Qunell and Councilor Giuseppe Caltabiano both voted against awarding the contract. For his part, Caltabiano said that he could not support something that was above what the city had budgeted for.
Although the general contractor is from Washington, Workman told the council that he believes the project will have an economic impact locally.
“I will say that this work will likely be staffed with 50 percent or more local firms,” Workman said. “There’s going to be a local electrician to do the work. All of the materials are going to come from a local quarry, I would anticipate a lot of the trucking is going to be local. Even though the general contractor is out of state, I still think it’s going to provide local jobs.”