05-23-2022 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday, May 9, 2022 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 6 of 7 where to go. Mr. Fullerton asked if there is any way to rearrange the project so the survey is done on the front end to get input from people. Seals clarified her recommendation is to put the survey at the front end to get a pulse on the community. Eleanor Winston, 765 Spring Hill Road, completely agrees with Mr. Fullerton and stressed that having been Bruce Dayton’s neighbor for many years, she saw him buy up properties and eventually give those to the State for Wood Rail, noting Mr. Dayton really loved nature. Jan Page, 408 Dexter Drive, Long Lake, said in much of her life she lived in urban areas such as South Minneapolis where she would see bullets in the gutter and she noted she really loved Long Lake. A few days ago she stopped at Summit Beach and there were young people sunbathing and kayaking, and shared that earlier today she was driving back from Elk River and thought how lucky she is to live where there are farms on both sides. Ms. Page’s point is that this area is really precious and they can see on the news what is happening because of too much development on the earth and she thinks Orono has an opportunity to be on the right side of history here. She commends the plan and the things Seals was talking about. Seals moved, Johnson seconded, to approve the plan with the addition of a City survey at the beginning. VOTE: Ayes 4, Nays 0. 10.PUBLIC WORKS FACILITY (21-039) – BIDS Edwards stated this item is a Council action to reject all the bids received on this project and provide direction on the way forward. Low bids on the project came in at just over $18,000,000 and the budgeted bond is for $13,000,000. Much of the cost is due to the current construction environment and the design committee met and came up with a proposed way forward which is to break the project into components of site work, building, and the commodities area. Then they would look at bidding those in sequence with an eye on construction pricing to time the bids during a better market in the future. Barbara Schmidt, 50 Landmark Drive, has a lot of confusion about how this is going. She asked what the next step is and why bids came in so high. Mayor Walsh stated the City went through months of design work with the public works department, architects, Edwards, and put it all together knowing the current location is surrounded by swamp so there is not room to build. They have all the details ready and the reason the bids are so high is because of the supply chain issues and what is going on in the economy right now. He shared an example of some wind damage on one of his buildings and needed siding replaced. In October the estimate was $25,000 and in March the estimate is $85,000. He noted the City is not in any hurry so they can wait to get the right price. Ms. Schmidt asked why they need to do it at all in Orono and what the deficit is in the current building. Walsh clarified the public works building is next door, it is about 25,000 feet and today the City needs about 40,000 to house everything in that facility and do all the things they need to do in that space. With the growing population and because Orono does a lot of things for other cities, they need to get things in place for the next 50 years and this is the one spot in all of Orono and the City happens to own it.