The Sunflower County Board of Supervisors met on Monday to open bids for three of the 2017 Emergency Bridge Repair Projects and voted to take the only bid received under advisement.
Board Attorney Johnny McWilliams said the bids that came in were thousands of dollars higher than the engineer estimated.
“So the question is whether we’ve got the money,” he said.
Out of the three companies to pick up bid packets, only McBrideCo, LLC of Batesville actually submitted bids, but they only bid on two of the three projects, number 155, East Minot Road bridge, which is a state-aid road and number 60, North Sheffield Road bridge, which is not a state-aid road.
The bidding process was set up so that contractors could bid on a single project, all three projects or any of the three.
The base bids on the two bridges came in at $258,000 and $286,580 respectively, but lower bids of $241,000 and $267,580 were also submitted for an alternative method of repair that Christian Gardner of Gardner Engineering called, “A better product, a more standardized product.”
The base bids called for rehabbing the existing cap saddles of the bridges to allow the reuse of those caps, which is more costly than the alternative method, which would get rid of the existing caps and replace them with a new ones that do not need to be modified. Gardner explained that the cap is the middle component of the bridge; it sits atop the pilings and holds up the decking that vehicles drive over.
The bridge that McBrideCo did not bid on was number 62, which is Sunflower Road bridge. McWilliams said the board would likely seek advice from the county engineer on how to proceed.
In other business
The board received proposals for employee health insurance and voted to take them under advisement until Monday Oct. 30 at 10 a.m.
