- We call this meeting meeting of the County Captain and President Board July 30th, 2025 to quarter. And I'd like to ask if you would like to please state your attendance. John Leihardt, President. Dr. Bruce, here. Jeff DeKan, here. Grace Bowling, here. Jim Silverstein, here. Adam Teese, here. And Jay Baer, joining us here in the Greenwood Athletic League. Here. Got it. Thank you. Thank you.
- Number two is approval of consent agenda. It says claims, and I believe we only have one, is that correct? We also, it's not on this, again, sheet, we also circulated minutes in our live 16th meeting. So if you want to approve both of them consent agenda, there's going to be a motion for that. Second. Move and second. I need discussion, further comments about that. If not, if you please, I'll take the motion.
- John Weichardt, yes. Bruce, yes. Jeff McCamp, yes. David Bowen, yes. Jim Silverstein, yes. Pat Deese, yes. David. Yes. Thank you. Item number three, transition report. Mr. McKinnon, thank you. Item four, president's report. Let me mention a couple things. One is your place in your city is the St. Louis, Wilmington publications.
- Nice. Good job. Thank you. I was going to remind all of you to remember how to turn this on and off. It's going to be a good idea if I do the same thing. So I had a pleasure to be able to shake the Wilmington Foundation, the Wilmington magazine, and pay for, by all of my friends, JSL brothers, Schmidt Associates, and Convergence. It's a piece of beautiful publication, both cover and
- story inside. I want to thank them for doing that. They will be smashin' out in the bedrooms. It's coming to two shifts, final of today, and we'll be serving them to the local hotels. I have mentioned before that they are more popular at the local hotels than getting in Spideland. I have been working on a rewrite of the song Rocky Raccoon to say that Rocky Raccoon fell back in his room only to find distinctly Bloomington.
- Anyway, I've sent a message to Sir Paul McCartney. I haven't heard back from him yet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, member polling. Thank you very much. The second thing I want to report is that among the contract recommendations you're going to hear today is one for landscaping. We had two bids for landscaping, two contractors bid. Both of those contractors were local. Neither of those contractors
- have labor agreements with their workforce. Souter's Landscaping, you'll hear a little more about their proposal later, submitted a request for exemption from our pre-qualifications as permitted under Section 13. Their request was identical to and consistent with those that have already previously been approved at each one of our other meetings. And so I approved that exemption as well. So,
- And with that, I think you're going to find out in Mr. Nagel's presentation that all the other contractors that he'll talk to you about today all have labor agreements. So this was the only exemption that was requested out of that entire group of bids received on the 22nd of July. So with that, unless there are any questions about that, item number five is a CBU sanitary
- sewer update, and I'm going to beg your indulgence because much has happened about this in the last couple of weeks. So please, please bear with me. You may recall that at our July 16th meeting, the budget submitted by Mr. Nagel of Weddle Brothers included a new cost of $154,000 for relocation of the sanitary sewer and upsizing it from 18 to 24 inches. In addition to construction related costs,
- there was a redesign is necessary and that added another $12,000 to this project to a total of roughly $166,600 plus. Following our meeting, I asked to meet with the CBU director and on Thursday, July 24th, I met with the director, two of their engineers and the CBU city attorney.
- Although there have been differences of opinion about the relocation of the sewer line between our engineers, I told the CBU staff that I did not want to relitigate that issue, but focus on whether we might achieve a compromise related to cost. I pointed out that both the CIB and CBU stood to benefit from the relocation and upsizing now. The CIB protected our project from future disruption by the CBU if it needed upsized later.
- And the CBU avoided the full cost of upsizing to 24 inches when needed later by piggybacking on our relocation of that sewer line now. As a result, there was, as a result, there was not a more equitable cost sharing opportunity than our project being reimbursed only for pipe sizing. So up to last week, the CBU had simply said, we'll pay for the difference in 18 to 24 inch pipe, which
- is estimated probably at around $5,000 roughly on that entire project. My proposal on July 24th was that the CIB total cost now of redesigned relocation, upsizing and tap connection fees was approximately $240,000. And was it possible for the CIB to receive greater relief in light of our ability to fund project alternates related to energy efficiency in the current building from those costs?
- If the purpose of $64,000 in the sewer reconnection fees was for CBU infrastructure improvements, could that fee be waived? Or if total project costs were shared, 75%, 25%, could that amount be credited to our tap connection fees? We were all told in the meeting by the CBU city attorney, city ordinance would not permit that adjustment. So I ask if another formula for shared costs could be achieved, could achieve that same result.
- Following the meeting, the director asked if I would provide a breakdown of the $166,000 cost as the examined options, which I felt was a positive development. Where there's life, there's hope. I forwarded that information as provided by Weddle to the director on Friday, July 25th, and proposed the following new option. The cost of the relocation, upsizing, and soil removal was estimated at $130,000.
- If the CIB assumed all other costs of the $166,000, could the CBU agree to split the construction related costs only with a not to exceed cost to the CBU of $65,000? That would have provided relief now to the expansion project and major CBU relief to ratepayers from full cost in the future if they had to upsize that from 18 to 24 inches.
- I received a response yesterday from the director that expressed appreciation for my proactive dialogue, but stated that after further internal discussion, the best option for the CBUM ratepayers is to stick to the original offer of payment for the cost only associated with upsizing the pipe from 18 to 24 inches. The response stated, quote, anything outside of this would set precedent for future development, unquote.
- I've asked the construction team to see if other costs beyond $5,000 difference in 18 to 24 inch pipe, tranching, soil remover for large pipe, different manhole placements, whatever, can be determined for reimbursement. So we are where we are. We must pay the tap connection fees. We would have had to have paid those anyway. We will have to relocate the sewer pipe to get CBU approval to proceed.
- Now I want to move to editorial comment. This is my opinion and not the CIB's position. Okay. I just want to state that clearly for the record. This is just my thoughts about this. I served on the CBU board, including as vice president for a number of years. I know that on occasion, an opportunity presented itself for updating an aging or undersized sewer line in a private development project. Unlike a private developer, our project is not one where we can increase our budget or pass our costs along.
- A convention center does not make a profit. It generates economic benefit to the community and new revenue spent in local restaurants, hotels, bars, gallery shops, a new job creation. New cost to us as a result, a new cost to us will result in either cuts or our inability to fully fund our project alternates. Both the CIB and CBU benefit from the relocation and upsizing now. We avoid future serious disruption. They avoid full cost of future upsizing.
- I will conclude my update by observing that a rationale of, quote, anything outside of its original offer would set a precedent for future development, maybe a precedent worth review by the CBU at some future date. A new precedent for, quote, sharing the expense of an infrastructure improvement now may save the ratepayers full and potentially higher expense later. Maybe worthy of further consideration as good public policy.
- So that concludes my update on the request for relief on the, not just the relocation, but the upgrade of the sewer from 18 to 24 inches. Happy to answer any questions if you have them. Item number six, excuse me, approval to pay CBU tap and connection fees, JS Health.
- training button. So tap and connection fees are
- They're part of any project where you're literally tapping into utilities. This is not new, happens all the time. What's important here is we want to make sure that the moment that these can be paid, that we can pay them so that the release of that material can happen through CBU. So what we are asking you to do is to approve these standard fees that come to us through CBU. It is a formula.
- uh, through them and knowing that when they do come to us, we can pay them right away because we already have prior approval of the CIB. So, so these exist in our prior to budget. These are not new items. No, these are not items. Yep. These are anticipated and they are part of every, every project that is a big new bill built like this. So it is,
- It's been a long time since I've looked at the CBU rates. What drives the sewer hook-on fee? What, is it the square footage of the development or number of bathrooms or what? Yeah, it is the load on the building that has, you know, by the function. Originally, we were going to be required to do a four inch water service and four inch sewer, which would have been more expensive as the design team went through
- the design process and fine tuned that we were able to get down to three inch water and three inch sewer line. So this is less than we had originally budgeted. However, it's still required. There are a few extra things. We did not anticipate the fire line radio read equipment, which is a new charge that CBU has been doing, but otherwise it was budgeted. Okay. And you were able to reduce the need for the capacity by what efficiencies and
- water design and that's correct. Early, early, early reads versus final design efforts. Great. Thank you. Let's get a motion first to approve the CBU tap and connection fees and if we can continue with the discussion or any questions. So we approve the payment of CBU. So Mr. Kim has moved it. We have a second. Mr. East has seconded it returning to us from
- a farm. So we have a motion and a second. Now we're moving to further discussion or further questions or comments. Since we had a four inch allocation for this part of the project is how much is the savings that we're showing here? We can follow back up and give you that information. I don't think we have it at our fingertips today, but I do want to make sure that everybody doesn't
- you know, feels good about this, right? This is part of a design process. A design process makes early assumptions. We never want to be short on the early assumptions. And so just through the normal parts of the process, really the final determination about the number of people we're going to have the building, the number of sinks, the number of bathrooms, right? All of those things figure into that. But we will be happy to follow up with the details of what the four inch versus three inches. But it is a formula that they use. It's pretty standard at CBU.
- Any other questions, discussion, comments? Seeing and hearing none, Mr. Whitlatch? John Weichart? Yes. Doug Bruce? Yes. Jeff McKim? Yes. Joyce Polling? Yes. Jim Silberstein? Yes. Adam Tease? Yes. Jay Baer? Yes.
- Let me retrain myself here. I'm going through behavior modification as we sit here. Item number seven, GMP 3B bid awards, Mr. Nagle of Weddle. I'm just gonna leave it on, okay? Thank you, Josh Nagle of Weddle Brothers. So we have completed the bidding activities for the convention center now.
- So through GMP3B, I just want to, as I've done in the past, give a summary of the bids received. We had six packages that were bid, and I'll give a little bit of commentary here. So if you notice, so we have our base bid amount and a bond amount, and then there's a column that says post bid adjustment, and there's a couple numbers in there throughout the trade.
- with the landscape as we did our post bid reviews with each of these bidders. You know, we go through scope. We make sure they have everything included in the project. Sauder's landscaping did not include a bond. They wrote N.A., which for us, we ask, well, why would you? They didn't write zero. They didn't write no bid. They just wrote N.A.
- So as we reviewed that with them, they gave us a cost post-bid and in consistency of bonding all the other prime bidders on the project, we've added that amount to their base bid amount. So the total there for 106444 includes their bond amount. Weddle Brothers was the low bidder on the site concrete package.
- Hagerman is a low bidder on the masonry combo package. And Weddle was also the low bidder on the general trades package. HFI is our mechanical contractor. All those packages had no adjustments as we went through the scope. And so when we get down to fire protection, so you notice both bidders have an adjustment in their numbers. So as we reviewed scope, they both had things that were
- either missing from their scope or they did not have a complete understanding some of the work relating to what happens here in the existing center. So as we worked through those things, we allowed some adjustments to ensure, number one, we had the complete scope bought before we went to GMP. But one adjustment we did make in the design
- the original design documents called for the event space to have a light hazard occupancy, which is what you would have in office spaces, non-combustible spaces basically. That's the designator that we really focused on to raise that to a ordinary hazard occupancy, which would then allow you to have, if you had automobiles or
- fire trucks or whatever you want to show in that event space, which was confirmed to be one of the objectives of some of the events that we would want to have in this center. So we essentially had a change in the design post-bid. We reviewed it with Eddie and with the Schmidt team and with IMEG and had understanding of what that adjustment would bring to the budget. So that cost is all captured
- Um, and that recommended award number for the sprinkler package. So is there any, I guess any questions so far with that, those numbers? Yeah. So, uh, on the, on the fire protection, did the post bid adjustments were from the bidders after they got a full understanding of the revised scope? Correct. Yes. Those are, those are numbers that they would be written a contract for. Okay.
- So as a summary at the bottom, so our estimated budget for these packages was $18,988,000, and the final value that we're recommending award for for that work is $18,907,000. So we're very, very close to what we budgeted for that scope of work. So as I go to the next slide, so I've given you a handout of this
- chart here with all the numbers on it, so if you want to follow along one way or another. But this is a summary of the Amendment 5, what we are asking for, we're requesting award of, which includes starting at the top. So GMP 1 and 2 reconciliation, we had information, it's mostly related to miscellaneous metals that could not be, the design could not be finished earlier until the
- final architectural documents were done. So we've already bid those packages. We had to go back and ask those contractors to basically catch up with the final design documents. So there's an adjustment there. Like I said, most of that is in the miscellaneous metal scope of work. And then we also have where we captured all the costs of the excavated material spoils that would have to go to Madora.
- for what we originally thought was the soil management plan. And so we asked the contractors to break those amounts out in their bid. So what we're doing now is showing that as a credit to the project because that money is being carried somewhere else on the owner's budget. So once we get beyond that, we have our six bids that we received for the bid packages.
- and allowances and contingencies. So winter conditions, we have identified for site concrete and masonry trades that may require temporary heating or additives to the concrete. That's what those allowances would be used for. And once again, as long with the contingency, anything that's unused at the end gets returned to the owner in this case.
- liability, insurance, bonds, fee, all the calculations that are done off those subtotals, totals up to $20,610,741 for GMP3B. Below that, we have a list of alternates, and there are five alternates, and they are all related to work in the expansion.
- it's finishes and things that we identified as protective alternates early on to make sure the number one, we hit the 52 million, much less what else could we do in the building there? So adding another $956,337 in recommended alternates, we're asking today for a total amendment award of 21,567,078.
- which if that amendment is approved, that would give us a total contract value at 50.9 million to get us through the GMP and alternates for today. Is that as far as you want to go? I think for right now, that probably makes sense. Yeah, I think so. I think so.
- Let's see if we can get a motion to approve this award and then we can have questions, discussion, comments. So is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. We'll have a Joyce motion and Jeff McKim's second. So now let's open the floor for questions or discussion. I'd like to make a comment just before that, that the alternates that are listed there,
- I think you're going to see it on another slide. We had 11 alternates for the project. Five of them were for new construction. Six of them were for the current building. We've discussed over the length of the project that our priority was the new construction alternates because we only get one shot at this expansion project. So what you're seeing reflected there is that all five of the alternates that we had on the list for the new construction are within this budget. And yet we are
- You know, we are still within the $52 million construction budget that we have. So having said that, let me ask if there are questions, discussion, Mr. Teese? Questions for JSL about our contract with Whettles. This is the awkward part of my questioning. Did our contract have any stipulation for number of bidders we would receive per package? It did not have a minimum requirement.
- Ultimately, we would have liked to see more bidders per package, particularly in the general trades where they're self-performing. A little competition of our own contractor would have been nice, but I think we're in a generally alignment with our estimate, but we would have liked to see. The general reality of the marketplace is you want to see three bidders, because that's driving a higher competition. You're not going to see that in Mechanical and Bloomington. There are really only two players, so you've got the two players here.
- But I just wanted to know the facts of what we were contractually obligated to request. So thank you. And if I may, you may recall that we accepted bids for all of this work, I forget, earlier in July.
- And where we only had a single bidder, we reopened the bids to see if we could get additional bidders for the project work. And so that's why we're to this sort of second look at these bids when we extended that to July 22nd. So there was certainly an attempt to see if we could solicit additional bidders on the project, especially where we only had one bid. Yeah, I want to make sure it's clear. My comments aren't about Weddle negatively. It's about what our contract required. Yeah, I understand. Thank you.
- Any other questions, comments, discussion? Yeah, Mr. McCann. So that leaves us about a million under the 52 million, it looks like. What are we able, is that for alternates for the existing building? Is that essentially what we can use that money for? Yes, and I think if I may answer a question you've asked to somebody else,
- What it gives us the opportunity to do is if we approve these alternates today, which I think Schmidt will tell us they need to know this information today for what they need to do moving forward, it gives us the opportunity clear into August and I believe even September to come back and review those other six alternates to see with this, if we continue to see a balance of a little over $1 million, what we can afford out of those alternates for the current building.
- After this approval, we do have a slide that will go through that process. Can I ask why there's a negative value with the RGB exterior column lights? Yes, actually, the base fixtures that were specified were actually more expensive than the alternate fixtures. We went through that and made sure with all the bidders had a deduct for that. So maybe they just had a better price on the fixtures and the alternate.
- I always just like to ask this, does JS recommend that we approve this? Yes, we do. Okay. We recommend it. Thank you. Nevermind. Mr. Bruce. I'll use my microphone too. So, and this number that we have right now, this 50, this is just,
- maybe more for the public as well. This $50,928,000 total includes just over a million dollars of the construction contingency still.
- I'm if I'm reading this right that we have we where there's it's more than that because the other packages have that in okay so that's what I wanted to see where that where that number is because of course we're always going to come across something that's unknown correct or a change so within the 50 50.9 million we have about 2.4 million in total contingency this is just the contingency that's it's applicable for 3b cost for 3b okay yes okay thank you and just as a reminder there's
- 2.4 million within the construction contract. And then we have additional monies. We have another contingency in the soft costs outside of that for owner's contingency. So in your experience, is that a normal contingency buffer that we have built into this? If anything, I think we're doing great. When you look at both of them together, we actually have more than you would typically have going into construction.
- Not that we'll find anything underground at this site, I'm sure. Any other questions? We have a motion and a second to approve the recommendation from Weddle Brothers to award the contracts. Mr. Whitlatch, if you would take the role. John Weichart? Yes. Doug Bruce? Yes. Jeff McKim? Yes. Joyce Pauling? Yes. Jim Silverstein? Yes. Adam Teese? Yes. Jay Baird?
- Yes. Thank you very much. And let me comment that offer my congratulations and an acknowledgement of the hard work that's gone into all of this by the design and construction team that we're looking at this project at this point. We're under our $52 million construction budget. And I want to thank and compliment all of you for the effort.
- Thank you. Thank you very much. So I do have two more slides to go ahead. So go ahead. It's anticlimactic. You know what? I'll say that again in a few moments. Okay.
- So I mentioned the remaining alternates. So there are six remaining alternates that apply to work within the existing convention center. So description of the work, the value of it, and then the column on the right, the expires column, that's basically the bid documents. We hold the pricing for 90 days, not alternates. So we would have until these dates to make a decision to incorporate
- the work into the project. So you have about $2.5 million worth of work total there and what those add up to, just round numbers for everything. And then the last slide here, just want to share some statistics that we put together here. So of the dollars that were awarded to union contractors, 86%
- And with that, we included structural steel, kitchen equipment, and the AV. The workers that will be performing the work on site are union. So I just want to call out those three trades, even though it's kind of tricky when you write a contract to a vendor, a fabricator, or manufacturer. But the workers on site will be union work. So we categorized the dollars to that area.
- And then local participation, so 64% local participation for the dollars spent versus 36% to regional contractors, which regional pretty much means Indianapolis in this case. They're not much further than that area. So the local contractors included, we do have eight. I didn't list them out here for your knowledge, just to recap that. So just want to share that, and that's all I have for today.
- Josh, correct me if I'm mistaken, but those local contractors, with the exception of Salters Landscaping, those are all union contractors? Goodman is open shop as well. OK, OK. So it's just those two. But I mean, Steve's roofing, sorry. So it's about half of that list is of the local contractors or union. But if our intent was to try to show
- some support for our local contractors who have labor agreements. I think these numbers certainly reflect that as well as the awards reflect that. So your previous slide on the alternates for the current building, I just wanted to make one comment. I asked Josh just to put them in order of cost. So they're not up there in any order of priority. They're just up there to show you what's left and how much each of them costs from lowest to highest. Thank you.
- Anything else, Josh, before I thank you again? No. Okay. I agree. It's been a great process between Weddle and Schmidt and this board and J.S. Hill. So it's for as much effort to win into it, I would argue is very smooth in the process. So it's much appreciated on our side. Mr. Teese. I just asked that as we go back through our regular monthly meetings, we have this topic of the alternates every month. I'd like that to be on the agenda because there's
- There's a calculus that will always play out now around where our risk model is related to really digging in the ground. Once we're through the ground, we'll have a better risk model, but it would be good to always revisit because several of those expiration dates will come quickly and we will wanna know none of those prices will go down. Yeah, okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments or observations before we move on?
- All right, item number eight, comments from board members. I want to defer to Mr. Whitlatch for a comment, if I may. Thank you, John. I did receive an email up on sending out the agenda for today's meeting from Vince Dora, who's the president of Dora Hospitality LLC, which is our hotel partner, we hope. And he just wanted to indicate that he was just getting back from vacation.
- and he is working on getting the hotel piece moving along. He indicated to me in his email that the city has their proposal and that he's hoping that the city gives him some time to meet in the near future so that they can finalize that proposal and indicated in closing that he just wanted to reach out and let us know where he was. He would not be able to be here today in person but that he is and I believe he is on the meeting
- I see him on the meeting and he is listening in. So Vince, we're hoping for good news. And just for clarification, when you said the city has their proposal, you mean Dora's proposal? Correct. It appears to me from reading it that it's a proposal from Dora to the city. Okay, thank you. Vince, you don't have to comment. You're welcome to if you want to, but you do not have to.
- And I want to recognize, before I forget, Sydney Zulek is here from the City Council. Appreciate that. Jim Dorian from the downtown Bloomington is here. Vince joined us virtually. And I see Mike McAfee from Visit Bloomington. Thank all of you for being here today.
- Any other comments from board members or any comments from board members? Yes, Mr. McKim. It's more of a question. And I don't mean to put Mr. Underwood on the spot, but just wondered where we are with respect to the budgeting process for the city. The city is going to hold their initial hearings in August. We're scheduled for August the 20th. Then just as a reminder, we'll be getting on, Jim will be getting with the city to schedule
- the City Council for a resolution to go to the Food and Beverage Tax Commission for a recommendation. It will come back hopefully with a positive and then their public hearing and final vote on the budget is in late September, early October. But August 20th is the work session. That's correct. Last night we'll present. Thank you. Any other comments from board members?
- All right, next item is comments from the public. Anyone from the public here to make a comment? You have up to two minutes if you would like to do so. Thank you. Any other comments from the public?
- Mr. Scioli, it's your opportunity to make a public speech if you'd like to. Yeah, that was the comment I was hoping you'd make, thank you. Any other comments from the public? All right, next board meeting, August 20th, 2025 at 3 p.m. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. We are adjourned.