News : Supervisors award bid for new Law Enforcement Center; total within FEMA budget

Architect Todd McNall goes over specifications with Jason Sanders and other supervisors Tuesday.

Michael Glavan of Kleiman Construction, left, speaks to local leaders involved in LEC planning.

Architect Rob Peck of Design Dynamics holds the 17.5 pound plans for new Law Enforcement Center.

There was some good news concerning the new Law Enforcement Center for Benton County during Tuesday's meeting of the Board of Supervisors.

But a controversy over some "informalities" in the bid submitted by the lowest bidder kept the supervisors busy for more than one hour as they sorted out county policy and state law.

First, the good news: The new LEC and jail, along with the Emergency Management Agency Emergy Operations Center (EOC) will all be built for a total of $6,212,934.

That amount, said architect Todd McNall of Design Dynamics, is less than what FEMA officials had predicted the cost would be.

"That amount is lower than that FEMA PW (project worksheet) amount," said McNall.

The low bidder is Kleiman Construction, Inc., of Cedar Rapids.

Kleiman Vice President Michael Glavan told the supervisors after the meeting that his crews are ready to start immediately.

But McNall and his colleague, Rob Peck, said it would take two to three weeks for the official contracts and bonding to be completed.

The actual work is scheduled to take approximately one year.

But instead of celebrating a project that can be completed under budget, the supervisors spent over an hour debating the bidding process.

The bidding was close. All five bids were between $6.2 and $6.8 million.

The second-highest bidder was Garling Construction of Belle Plaine, with a bid of $6,421,000.

But Garling owner Doug DeMeulenaere told the supervisors that Kleiman failed to follow all of the rules for bidders by not submitting duplicate copies of some of its bid documents, and also by failing to include in its duplicate bid sheet the hand-written amount of its bid. (The bid form has a place for the bidder to write the amount in number as well as in words, as on checks).

The supervisors heard from Demeulenaere and Bud Maynard of Garling.

Maynard told the supervisors that accepting Kleiman's bid despite the technical errors would not be fair the other bidders.

"We're happy to lose," he said. "We lose plenty of times. We just like to lose fairly."

But Glavan told the supervisors that while the large book of bid specifications called for duplicate copies of bid documents, the official notice to bidders only required one copy.

The contractors, architects and supervisors debated this issue for approximately an hour.

Benton County Attorney Dave Thompson read from the specifications book, where on three occasions it says that the county may waive the technical requirements. He also pointed out that under Iowa law, the county "must" select the lowest bidder.

After hearing all of these arguments, the supervisors voted unanimously to award the contract to Kleiman.

"Our number one priority is to be fair to taxpayers," said Supervisor Dave Vermedahl.