Fort Smith sewer system projects again tabled to a study session

It didn’t take the Fort Smith Board of Directors very long Monday night (Nov. 10) to push back again on two almost $27 million sewer system projects that they voted Nov. 4 to move to a future study session.

The board on Nov. 4 approved around $50 million in sewer system improvements mandated by a federal consent decree. The board tabled a $17.741 million project and a $9.111 million contract because they came in significantly higher than the initial cost estimates.

The proposed $17.741 million contract is with Bristow, Okla.-based Timco Blastings and Coatings and is for the “rehabilitation or replacement” of 190 sanitary sewer manholes and 30,000 linear feet of 8-inch and 12-inch diameter sanitary sewer line, according to the city. The work had an initial engineering estimate of $11.084 million.

The proposed $9.111 million contract, with Knoxville, Tenn.-based Morgan Contracting, is for “remediation or replacement” of 12,640 linear feet of sanitary sewer pipes and 130 manholes, according to the city. The initial estimate for the work was $5.191 million.

The work is targeted toward addressing a federal mandate to fix the city’s sewer system. After decades of failing to maintain the sewer system, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a consent decree in 2014 with the city of Fort Smith that required certain improvements to the city’s sewer system.

But despite the board voting to move the two items to a study session, Acting City Administrator Jeff Dingman unilaterally decided to place the two items on Monday’s special meeting voting agenda. Dingman said he wanted to use Monday’s “meeting capacity” to potentially approve other approaches to moving the projects forward.

A primary reason for the bids being significantly higher than the estimate is the work did not receive local bids.

“These two projects bid late in that cycle and didn’t get any local or any state responses. And again, those could be contributing factors to the numbers that we saw,” said Larry Yancey, an engineer with Hawkins-Weir Engineers, the firm that provided the estimates on the two projects.

Former Director Lavon Morton, who helped draft the sales tax plan eventually approved by voters in May to finance consent decree work, urged the board to push the two projects into 2026 or later.

“You don’t need to do $77 million in one year,” he said. “You can back these contracts up a little bit and not be forced into a situation where you’re paying way too much because you’ve worn out all the capacity with the local contractors.”

Yancey agreed that the larger $17.741 million project could be split into two projects, which could make it potentially easier for local firms to bid.

“Could that result in better bid pricing? It could,” Yancey told the board. “It could result in higher bid pricing. We don’t know. But we could definitely repackage it into two projects, two 15,000-linear foot projects and repackage it for bidding … if the board so chooses.”

But the discussion soon came to an end with a motion from Director Christina Catsavis.

“I’m the one that called this special meeting for the specific purpose of discussing the 911 call center,” she said. “I never had any intention of adding these (sewer system) items, so I’d like to make a motion to table items 2 through 5 until the first study session in January,”

The board voted unanimously in favor of Catsavis’ motion.