SHERIDAN — Progress toward proposed renovations of the Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library continued Thursday at a special meeting with the library board of trustees, who discussed potential construction costs. The library received only one bid for the work from O’Dell Construction, but the estimated costs exceeded the $600,000 budget, library director Cameron Duff said.
Duff said the original estimate for the work, excluding alternate projects such as lighting updates in the mezzanine and the children’s section of the library, was $320,000. The bid from O’Dell Construction, however, came in at $634,600 including alternatives, well over the original estimate.
“You have two or three options. One, you accept this bid, move forward with it and realize that you’re going to be over budget by $20,000, money that no one has,” Duff said. “There’s no guarantee that you’ll get anyone else to bid or that the costs of those items will actually be different. On the plus side, maybe it gives us a little more time to find a little more money, but probably not. That’s the thing, costs keep going up.”
The third option, Duff said, would be to request more information on the estimated prices for items such as acoustical panels and electrical work, which came in considerably higher than the original estimates.
“Those three vague areas that were way out of line, those are the areas that could be adjusted now, but some of the others, I can’t just go ahead and say ‘I am dropping the Inner Circle and only going with children’s and the security.’ That changes the whole scope and I would have to go up to bid again,” Duff said. “If you go back up to bid, it’s probably six months, at least.”
Board Chair Julie Davidson said her concern with the estimated costs surrounded the calculated price per square foot of construction.
“I’m looking at it from the insurance side but it’s almost $300 per square foot and $300 per square foot is more than where we’re at right now in Sheridan for ground up, including a foundation and everything,” Davidson said.
The high bid price complicates planned installation of a hearing loop system in the library’s Inner Circle, Duff said. The hearing loop system, Assist2Hear, would allow those with Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids to connect to the system so they can hear presentations better in the room. Duff said the system cannot be installed until after renovations are completed because it would have to be removed for construction and installed again, resulting in extra costs.
The bid for installation of the hearing loop by Arete Construction came in at $10,126, much lower than the initial estimate of $25,000, but that difference is not enough to make up for the high cost of the renovations to the rest of the building, Duff said .
“I would have recommended accepting the bid, but you can’t put it [the hearing loop] in if this hasn’t been remodeled,” Duff said. “I can’t go ahead and spend $600,000 on the construction because then there’s nothing for the rest.”
The board motioned to table the decision until its next meeting — set for Feb. 15 — to allow time to acquire additional information from O’Dell Construction on the bid.
