Athens County projects are being shelved once again until costs are cheap enough.
For the second meeting in two weeks, county projects are being shelved until contractors submit bids cheap enough for Athens County Commissioners’ liking.
The three commissioners elected at their meeting Tuesday to mothball a couple of renovation efforts — the installation of a natural gas generator at the Rome Township fire facility and window repairs at the old Nelsonville High School — led by the Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action Partnership, at least for a month.
Each of the two projects are to be funded by county-administered community development block grants.
Two bids for the estimated $28,100 or so generator project both came in at least $35,000. Neither of the two bidding contractors are Athens County-based firms. And no contractors placed a bid on the $16,800 Nelsonville project.
Those occurrences only happen in about 10 to 20 percent of HAPCAP projects, said Glen Crippen, the group’s community development coordinator. He guessed it’s been about two years since any project saw a re-bidding timeline and called it a “very unfortunate” circumstance.
Tuesday’s bid readings weren’t without limited controversy, with one apparent contractor storming out of the meeting, taking Crippen to task about the fire facility’s need for one specific type of generator — which, the contractor said, hiked up the project’s cost.
But Crippen chalked that up to the project’s requirements, saying it was out of his hands. The projects still need to be completed by the end of the year.
“We’ll have to go to bat for this again,” Crippen told the commissioners.
Two weeks ago, the commissioners elected to re-bid another $530,000 project to build new road salt storage huts after bids came in more than $100,000 than the previously estimated cost.
Commissioners also mulled the notion of another project, albeit one much further in the future.
Developer Jeff Tope plans to build at least seven duplexes on 150 acres just outside of The Plains near the intersection of Poston and Lemaster Roads. But doing so would require extending water and sewage lines from The Plains to the property.
Rich Kasler, superintendent of the Athens County Water and Sewage District, showed up in support of Tope’s plans.
“Now he’s at the point of really getting serious about it,” Kasler said. “He just wants an idea if it’s possible, if it’s not possible.”
None of the commissioners had qualms about the potential move, but Commissioner Lenny Eliason said he’d at least need a timeline and approval from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency before he’d strike a deal with Tope.
“You’d have to be comfortable at giving us that,” Eliason said.
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