- All right, four o'clock. So it's the witching hour. So let's call the special meeting of the Monroe
- County Capital Improvement Board for January 9th, 2026 to order. And we will begin by, I'll ask Mr.
- Parrish to take the role. John Weichart, present. Doug Bruce. Jeff McCann, here. Joyce Bowling, here.
- Adam Teague. Jim Silverstein, here. Jay Baer, here.
- Thank you. We have one item of business on the agenda. A request for approval of change order in excess
- of twenty five thousand dollars for some foundation work. Barry are you presenting this. I'm giving
- the intro and everybody has a little bit of a part in it. Everybody doesn't. So as you know when potential
- change orders come about and they're over twenty five
- thousand that we need to bring it to the board in the fall. There's an issue that just came up since
- Tuesday and that has to do with preparing of the subgrade for the building. Even though we have steel
- above us we still have a lot of prep work to do below that level and at the slab and below level. So
- the potential change order is
- significant in its dollar value, and we thought it was prudent of us to make sure you all understood
- why we are asking this. So with that, we have a series of slides to go through so that you understand
- what this issue is, as you'll, I'm sure, have to answer to our community here and there when questions
- come up. And so we'll start off with giving some facts.
- Yeah, so I'll start. So this is Sarah Hempstead for everybody online. So we knew we were going to do
- this while there's not great. The slab was designed to accommodate that as much as possible based on
- all the extensive geotechnical report. And so we have there's a little section of the slab, which includes
- some things that we don't always include like a geogrid, which is essentially a metal
- a very spitty mesh that goes underneath the subgrade, that's that red line right there, to create a
- consistent stable surface for the slab. As we have moved through the site, just encountered some areas
- that, due to the site itself, due to the weather, where the under-surface material is just not as stable
- as we'd like it to be. And so that's really what this change order is. It's where we encounter those areas,
- taking the soil down to where it needs to be, putting a new solid under surface, and then building a
- slab, as it was. It is pretty much exactly what contributing it's design to do is help us sub-surface
- material. The alternative to doing something like this would be to say, let's assume that everywhere
- twice as much soil is bad than we think might be. And we could have done that. Let's scrape the whole site.
- twice as much as we might possibly need to be, but it's a much more expensive way to go about it. This
- is the cheapest list. As we find it, we'll mitigate. Yeah, so just as a background of the project status,
- Andrew shared with Little Brothers Project Manager. So we are preparing for the silent grade, the subgrade,
- the geogranite, and the packed stone. So basically we have
- subgrade, whether that's native soil or stone backfill, to get to grade. We put the geogrid down and
- put a foot of compacted 53s for concrete. That's where we're at now. Obviously, as we see across the
- road, we see in this picture, our steel activities have progressed to where our long-span trusses are
- set. Now we're getting ready for all of our underground to get out of the ground with our slab on grade.
- As far as sequencing, again, so we complete our foundations, we erect our steel, and then
- final preparations for the subgrade, which is after all the heavy equipment and everything. It's kind
- of demode and got out of the way. So we didn't want to do any prep work for this soil. Whenever we knew
- we were going to have cranes and boom lifts and walls, everything else here, because we would have just
- tore it up and doubled our work. So again, now we're to that point where we're going to place the geodegraded
- stone and everything. So again, could not stabilize the subgrade prior. Now we're to that point where
- we can address it. There's a couple of things that we've done.
- that tried to prevent as much damage as possible. So as we progressed on a weekly basis, we'd go in
- and back-drag, kind of remove the water that we could at the standing water and everything. And also
- on this bottom right picture, contractors paid a lot of money to have about a foot and a half stone
- fill job sites that could train the boomless and we were tracking through this and create the sinkholes.
- So that's some protection.
- with this change order, the progression plan is we'll have Paul Woodzing who did the geotechnical report
- come out, basically an observation. So as they go through, they say, hey, remove this material and down
- to a suitable soil, fill it with stone up to that subgrade level just to give us true subgrade that
- can sustain the geogrid, make it work to its true potential. So that's kind of the game plan with this
- change based off their walks.
- So we have asked federal brothers to estimating where we think this condition will land where we can
- have a protective figure and not see the entire site. Andrew I don't know if you'd like to go into a
- little bit of how you determine that. Yeah honestly it was a lot of assumptions. There's some areas
- we made six inches and some areas
- be two feet, some areas it could be worse on one half of the job versus the other. So we kind of broke
- it out into our quadrants and tried to say, okay, well, we can assume we may be a foot and a half here
- based off of what we're observing right now. But Alden-Witzig has been on site since we broke around
- July and think periodically to determine where we're at, soils and stuff. So again, this is our best
- judgment, safest possible worst case scenario where we'll be
- It will be by truck in a cost that was provided with a lot better forms. So we'll be able to track those
- tickets and obviously be saving. This is the dollar figure. And before we ask for any action on this
- I just wanted to warn you that with this potential payment. This is where our contingency plans and
- our contingency to date
- would be just over 500,000. 538, 748, roughly 22 percent contingency. You can see where the original
- contingency started at 2.4 million and 3.6 million. So just having that awareness of where we are is
- a piece of information
- sort of that. Questions? Let's not do questions yet. So this is a recommendation for the board. So I
- would ask for a motion to approve the recommendation and then we can have questions or discussion about
- the motion. Second. Okay, so we have a motion by Mr. McKim who wanted to be in the minutes in his last
- meeting. Seconded by Joyce.
- Now, now let's open this up for any questions or discussion for board members. Any questions?
- This is totally. This is. Yeah. Any questions? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, I guess I just don't understand.
- So is this caused by the heavy equipment movement or is this just caused by the fact that we have lots of soil?
- I mean, it's a mixture of both, for sure. But the soil is less than ideal. So we encountered a lot of
- random fills and stuff. And they ran into that with the geotag report. And then you open that up in
- order for us to set steel, get everything gray. And then this time, you hear the freeze, the thaw,
- the rain. So does it dry up? Yeah. Which is kind of what I was going to ask the same thing.
- So it was a problem we couldn't have anticipated when we did out the whole project. Not the magnitude.
- You know, you're going to have some level of it, but it's just impossible to know. Soil samples don't
- tell the whole story. Right, right. Yeah, the weather and the precipitation and all that plays into
- factors. And then my other follow-up, which always asks this question, are we 22% done with the project?
- Based on the value of what's on the site, I'd say yes, sir. Yeah, we are. And again, I think we talked
- about this in a lot of the meetings.
- Highest risk, I guess, for contingency use is just going to be as we get out of the land. So this big
- soiled slab, you know, you're talking 60,000 square feet-ish area that we're trying to address. We only
- have a few more things that we're getting out of the ground as far as the deep foundations on the south
- side of the project. We did finish all of the concrete foundations across the road. So yeah, last big
- puzzle piece. A lot of the ugly stuff is over. The rest of it. There still may be some rock that we
- have to remove.
- as we go through some of the foundation on the route south side of the field. Yeah, the loading docked
- area on the south side of the project is basically our last deep work. That's a small area, too. Yeah,
- it's not very large. The detention system is the biggest. So that'll look out past the foundation.
- And I guess one one reason for calling this as a special meeting not waiting until the twenty-first
- was schedule implications. We were what I was preparing to do under slab and then you know it's a need
- to review the upgrade. They had further instruction to get that subgrade statewide. So it has pushed
- off that the most slab work of a couple days.
- but trying to get this in front of you is possible so that we can move further in place. Okay. Yeah,
- and I might mention that when we had our meeting in December, we were about 16%. This is another 6%,
- which brings us up to, so this individual one is about 6% of the contingency budget. And I would like
- to mention that
- This is exactly how it's supposed to work. And we've got to change order this in excess of $25,000.
- We had to have a special meeting. You were all good enough to be available. We gave our public notice
- of 48 hours. So from Tuesday when we didn't know about this, here we sat on Friday and we're able to
- approve it. So I appreciate everybody's work and effort in making today possible and making this happen.
- I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, Jeff, do you have another question? Oh yeah, I just on the overall schedule
- are still good. Yes, yeah, we are tracking. We have steel that's going to be delivered the Friday before.
- Everything's in fabrication ready to sit down here. Good. And the signage is all up. I've noticed on
- this. Yeah, we did put the message boards up, but we get the 19th. I think we'll have the remainder
- of the signage out through the final walk with city engineers.
- Friday, we close Sunday night. Turn the signs, unbag everything. Then have our closure first thing Monday
- morning. Again, steel will be on site ready to set up. OK, any other questions? Discussion? Just simply
- want to point out that we're approving a contingency change order not to exceed $150,000. We want to
- make sure that not to exceed is part of that motion.
- So unless there are any other questions or discussion from board members, seeing none, Mr. Parrish,
- you want to take the role? John Weichart. Yes. Jeff McKim. Yes. Joyce Poehling. Yes. Adam Tease. Yes.
- Jim Silverstein. Yes. All right. There are no other items on the agenda. Happy New Year. And you don't
- have to go home if you can't stay here. We are adjourned.