FORT MADISON – Lee County Supervisor Garry Seyb let out a small sigh of relief Thursday as bids were opened on the much-anticipated Lee County Health Department/EMS facility.
Supervisors met in open session Thursday afternoon to open bids from about 12 contractors in four different bid packages that totaled just under $4.8 million. With construction management fees, and design and engineering fees, the total project is close to $6.5 million.
That figure was slightly higher than supervisors had hoped, but in the range that Supervisor Chairman Garry Seyb said was workable.
“I’m encouraged overall and we’ll have to see when they get through these bid packages that everything is apples to apples,” Seyb said.
“It sounds like we’ll be in a total project area of $6.5 million. When you look at the $5.5 (million) we had over a year ago, you can expect something like that. I was hoping to be closer to six (million) to be honest, but we have $5.2 million secured at this point for the project.
Current funding includes about $1 million in remaining America Rescue Plan Act funding, a $600,000 Community Development Block Grant, $3 million in USDA Rural Emergency Health Care and Community Development Project funding, and private donations totaling the $5.2 million.
The funds are mostly federal funding sources with the exception of the private donations and, because of that, are subject to some heavy regulations, including Davis-Bacon wage requirements and Build America Buy America regulations.
Seyb said that contributes to the higher bids.
“I don’t have a problem with Davis-Bacon because we’re hiring our people within the county a lot of the times or southeast Iowa and paying them a fair wage,” he said.
“There are a lot of requirements when you mix a lot of funds. We have federal funds, ARPA funding, community-based funding, donation funding. When you put all those funding streams together, there are a lot of requirements and that tends to drive up the costs.”
Bids were submitted in four categories: general construction, HVAC, electrical, and fire and safety.
Supervisors didn’t vote on approving the bids and will await a review of the bids by Carl A. Nelson company, the county’s construction manager for the project.
Seyb said he was encouraged by the number of people in the board room as the bids were opened.
“I was very happy to see the amount of people we had bid on each of the four sections. For the overall bidding, we had a larger variety than we anticipated,” he said.
“I was actually surprised at how close the bids were. I’m not an expert, but that tells me the bids were competitive. They came in where I anticipated - maybe a little higher, but nothing I thought we, as a board, couldn’t consider. If we would be in the $7.5 to $8 million range there would have been very hard conversations to even consider it.”
Construction could start in the fall if everything falls into place, which would give the county two new EMS facilities and a new Lee County Health Department for under $8 million by next summer. Construction is well underway on the new $1.1 million county EMS bay in Keokuk.
“I think we’re doing all the right things. The board is doing a good job in providing these services for the citizens and doing it in a way that’s sustainable to the future.”
The facility is being constructed on land donated to the county by the Glen Meller family on the city's west side where the former Iowan Motel used to stand. Per the agreement with the county, the new facility will carry the Meller family name and all construction on the property needs to be for a public purpose.
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