Council accepts $7.3M police station bid

The new Moscow police station will cost almost $7.3 million, and construction will start this summer.

The Moscow City Council on Monday night accepted the low base bid of $7,278,000 from Wellens Farwell Inc. of Enterprise, Ore., and approved two alternates to the project.

One alternative includes adding triple-paned windows instead of double-paned ones, which will cost $11,300, and the other is changing one of the proposed secured gates to a cheaper option, which will save the city $7,882, for a total project amount of $7,281,418. The council also allowed staff to execute construction change orders not to exceed 5 percent of the total project amount.

Moscow voters passed a 10-year, $9.64 million general obligation bond last May to fund the construction of a $7.89 million Moscow Police Department facility on the corner of South Main Street/U.S. Highway 95 and Southview Avenue. The bond will also cover the cost to remodel the existing police station on East Fourth Street to accommodate other city office needs ($1.5 million) and the Paul Mann Building next to Moscow City Hall ($132,043). All three estimates were provided by the city last year.

Bill Belknap, deputy city supervisor of community planning and design, said the main police facility will be 15,232 square feet and the storage and evidence processing outbuilding will be 3,042 square feet. The project will take about one year to complete.

Solar panels were probably the most popular of the 10 alternatives to the project, but given the project budget constraints and extended payback period on the roughly $82,000 panels, Belknap said city staff did not recommend the council approve the alternative.

“However the insulated glazing has a much more significant impact on energy savings for the facility,” he said.

Belknap said energy cost savings for the triple-paned windows will allow the city to recapture its $11,300 investment in the windows in less than four years while it would take more than 36 years to recapture the money invested in the solar panels.

Belknap said the police facility will be able to accommodate the load for future solar panel installation and that the cost of solar panels has decreased over time.

In other business, the council:

Discussed the potential for offering businesses public right of way, primarily on Main Street, to provide more capacity for patrons while maintaining social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adopted a resolution to allow the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport to accept $18,129,792 in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding that can be used for operations and project matches for existing and future Federal Aviation Administration grants issued this year and the new terminal that is in the design stage and expected to start construction in 2021.

Approved the fee reduction for on-site vendors who participate in the downtown 2020 Moscow Farmers Market.

Accepted the $245,400 low bid from Kenaston Corporation of Lewiston and authorized staff approval of construction change orders in an amount not to exceed 10 percent of the contract amount for structurally repairing the roof on the Moscow Water Department Building on the corner of North Main and West A streets. Roof damage and asbestos caused city employees to vacate the building last year. Temporary cribbing was installed in 2019 to support the beams after a perimeter beam dropped.

Authorized staff to spend no more than $200,000 plus potential construction change orders not to exceed 10 percent of the yet-to-be-determined contract amount to replace a return line at the Water Reclamation and Reuse Facility on West Pullman Road with a new ductile iron pressure pipe after a leak was recently discovered in the line. Moscow Senior Engineering Technician Nate Suhr said the estimated cost of the project is $120,000 to $160,000, but because the repairs need to be completed immediately, bids could come in higher. He said five contractors are interested in completing the project.

Garrett Cabeza can be reached at (208) 883-4631, or by email to gcabeza@dnews.com.