Council gives nod to City Hall bid
May 14, 2008
By Ed Farrell
In a 4-3 vote Monday, the Snoqualmie City Council awarded a $4.8 million contract to Bird Construction, of Issaquah, to build a new City Hall.
Now, the panel must decide how it will pay for the new building, and whether or not a reserve fund earmarked for the long-awaited community center project will be raided.
Council members Kathi Prewitt, Charles Peterson, Bryan Holloway and Bob Jeans voted to approve the Bird bid, even though the total exceeded the city’s preliminary estimate by $1 million.
Council members Kingston Wall, Maria Henriksen and Jeff MacNichols voted against the measure.
City Administrator Bob Larson said he and Finance Officer Harry Oestreich will now crunch the numbers and return with a funding package as soon as possible.
Neither Larson or Oestreich would offer a solid recommendation to accept the Bird bid, and Larson’s reluctant support came only after he solicited “a firm council pledge” to dip into $800,000 previously set aside for the community center building if needed.
“Without that (pledge), I would not recommend this,” Larson said.
Oestreich refused to endorse the deal, saying the policy changes that would be required to make the project work, such as abandoning the council’s priority of withholding reserves to cover city debt, violated previously adopted conservative standards.
“This pushes our conservative philosophy, and it stretches the envelope quite a bit,” Oestreich said.
Oestreich offered two basic funding mechanisms to raise the $6,044,447 needed to build the City Hall. One scenario requires utilizing the community center funding total; the second does not.
Both scenarios, however, would require extensive use of Real Estate Excise Tax funding, and both would require the council to issue $2.4 million in short-term bonds.
Oestreich cautioned, however, both funding plans were reliant on an unstable economy, which he predicted could last for several years.
Peterson, who two weeks ago urged his colleagues to “bite the bullet” and move forward, said he was confident the city would be able to fund the project.
Centralizing the city’s staff, currently spread over three locations, would represent significant savings, Peterson said, as well as enable the city to sell off properties currently in use by staff.
Peterson acknowledged, however, that the project would require staunch oversight, which he felt would occur should the council “not tie the hands” of the administration.
“We need to build this building on budget,” he said. “There is no fat.”
MacNichols was just as stridently opposed to awarding the bid.
“I can positively say I am not comfortable with this,” he said. “We’ve worked diligently to get out of trouble by using good, conservative judgment.”
The new City Hall, he said, could be delayed.
“This is not an emergency situation,” MacNichols said. “It’s something we want. This makes me feel we’re putting the city at risk.”
Henriksen said she, too, was uncomfortable with the risks, and was opposed to dipping into money committed for the community center.
Henriksen acknowledged the $11.5 million community center project had been rejected twice by voters, but that was only, she said, because of a competing school bond measure that was also defeated.
“If you ask John Q. Public what they prefer,” she said, “they’re going to say a new community center.”
Jeans said he appreciated the administration’s conservative stance, but felt the project would succeed.
Any decision, he said, “is going to be painful, but we have options.”
Prewitt said there was merit to Peterson’s argument about centralizing staff and vacating city-owned buildings.
“We’re occupying two of the most prime spots downtown,” she said, adding she was confident the project could be funded.
“I can’t believe this administration would even put this out unless they had some confidence it would work,” Prewitt said.
Wall said he was troubled by Oestreich’s predictions that city REET funds would continue to increase over the next several years in the face of a sluggish economy.
“The one thing a delay does buy us,” he said, “is clarity in where the bottom (of the economy) lies,” Wall said.
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