Let's talk Schiffer Park and the awarding of the bid for 357K.
I have a lot of heartburn over this, and I had been going back and forth on whether I wanted to vote yes or no. Here's my justification for my YES vote, for better or for worse:
The original budget seemed normal to me, especially for such a tiny park (125k). I don't know who set the budget originally or what they based their number on, but in the private sector that seemed really reasonable.
PARC upped the budget to 183k, a 58k increase- still not too bad, especially if we are expanding the park. The original RFP's from summer 2019 came in incredibly high- only one bid came back, and it was way over 420k. They decided to rebid; when I asked why the RFP went out in December it was explained that that was far enough away from 'peak season' of construction and was within the normal bid timelines for a spring project.
I fact checked this because I don't know municipal project timelines; I reached out to a contact in NYC and asked about their project bid timelines, and they confirmed that they usually RFP for spring construction in Dec of the previous year or January/Feb of the current year. They cited a specific case, a small dogpark as an example:
SHORE FRONT PARKWAY DOG RUN CONSTRUCTION New York ;
Spring 2020 construction RFP 01/31/2020 BIDS DUE 02/25/2020
They had been trying to get their cost down for quite some time, but cost of concrete work and construction has continued to rise. Contractors are barely bidding on small projects, and will only bid a long ways out on contracts that are multi-million in pay out. They've been working on this one stinking dog park since 2018. https://www.nycgovparks.org/.../capital.../project/8968
When we (Ferndale) got back our 2nd bids for Schiffer, they were still extremely high (684K - 783K). We asked for alternates to get the price down, and the lowest came back at 357K. That price seems crazy to me, but when I benchmarked it was inline with what they're seeing in municipal construction costs in other areas, especially anything that touches electric. Again, for example, the Shore Front Parkway Dog Run I cited above in NYC had bids coming in from a low of 765k up to 2.7M. https://www.nycgovparks.org/oppo.../capital-projects/bids/72
If you want to make yourself sick, I suggest looking at the costs associated with other projects in NYC. I know cost is slightly elevated there, but due to the abundance of construction companies and contractors it's not much more expensive than in Michigan https://www.nycgovparks.org/.../capital.../bids/bid-results
So, once I knew that the bids weren't too far off from reality, I examined the funding mechanisms. 183K from the general fund, allocated to PARC didn't give me much pause. 220K extra from DDA was a surprise, and I had to talk to several people about how DDA funding works; essentially, TIF (tax increment financing) monies are captured from the downtown, and can only be spent on downtown projects. They have a solid fund balance currently, and while this is a big chunk of the balance it seemed worthwhile considering that we're not likely to have more capital improvement projects in the downtown in the near future. http://www.downtownferndale.com/about-the-dda/financials/
Then, I weighed the added benefit. If it wasn't obvious to those who saw the council meeting, I'm not a fan of the revised design (nixes the stage, makes it a mound). I'm not a huge fan of the design in general, especially since we're losing the large honeylocust tree nearest to 9 mile (and don't get me started on how I don't trust the tree survey results that say the tree is dying, especially since I don't see that tree on our tree survey online http://data.ferndalemi.gov/datasets/ferndale-tree-survey-2017?geometry=-83.148,42.459,-83.127,42.462&fbclid=IwAR1z17Gp98ZHPRA2zPu13qphyr3QqmhUr97dIJr7MLKOeZnYq8bOEMsU_Hk). I love the added lights, though, and the expansion of the park. I was worried about the Pride stage since Julia Music brought up that it narrows Planavon to the point that the normal stage won't fit, but Greg Pawlica is also involved in Pride and didn't seem to think it was an issue. I love the idea of a nice tree'd spot in downtown where I could sit down and relax while taking the dog and/or baby for a walk. And I do really love the additional volume of trees, though I want confirmation that they are native species.
Finally, I weighed the 90K contribution from Ferndale Haus that we were set to lose if we don't get this done by end of spring 2020. If we didn't move on it, we'd lose that extra funding for the project; at this rate it doesn't seem like construction costs are going to come down any time soon, so we'd be leaving money on the table and have to expect to pay that extra amount in the future (if we were still committed to improving that park/downtown).
Even then, I had a hard time passing it because I 1.) don't like to feel backed into a corner or rushed and 2.) I have a hard time with these costs in general. But I do think I made the right decision given the above, even though I'm not completely happy about it.
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