By Martin Couch
The city of Bryant might have to wait on getting their new water tank that was passed this summer by the Bryant City Council.
According to Bryant Water and Wastewater director Monte Ledbetter, there is a more important project[more] — aeration — that needs to take precedence.
"Back in September, we approved the low bid contract for the water tank and we had 60 days to sign that contract after the city council approved it," Mayor Larry Mitchell said.
The Landmark Construction Company made a low bid of $2.7 million, which was much lower than the estimated budget for the tank project of $3.6 million.
"We got a really good bid and the Council approved that," Ledbetter said. "The time to sign that contract will be up on Monday. We have to have it signed by then."
However, the Arkansas Natural Resources offices have not approved a request from the city for a loan to pay for water and wastewater projects yet.
"We may have to go out and re-bid if they (Landmark) aren't willing to extend that deadline 60 days," Mitchell said. "At this time, the water/wasterwater department is trying to decide which items needed to be first on the list or second on the list. Right now, the aeration project is more important than the water tank and we can't do both until we get financing from the Arkansas Natural Resources. And, at this point, we are not in a position to do that.
"They have asked us to make sure that everything is in order before they make the load to us," the mayor continued. "We have to make a decision to step out and sign a contract to fund it ourselves or wait on when the loan comes through, which we don't know what or when it will be. And also have enough money to do the aeration project. We have some money stashed back, but we don't have enough to do both projects for any length of time until the loan comes through and, right now, they are saying they are not willing to loan us the money."
The aeration project is from an administrative order.
"This is a top priority," Ledbetter said. "The reason I brought this to you in the summer was to get approval from the Council, because we had one of our pump’s bearings failing and it was going to cost $50,000 to replace it. Since we had the money, the Council approved us to go up to $700,000 for the first phase of this fund. The low bidder came in at $555,000, which is well below what we thought. Kind of where we are at, we want to sign the contract for this and get it started."
Ledbetter stated that the equipment that is going to be used in this project has a four-month lead time, so by the time the contract is signed and the equipment is ordered it will be four months. But the work itself will proceed quickly.
"We bid on this on Oct. 28 and are on schedule with the administrative order," Ledbetter said.
"We can go ahead and approve this, because we have the funding to handle it, but we don't have the money to do both without a line of credit from the Arkansas Natural Resources," Mitchell added. "We can't do it if that contract for the tank isn't signed by Monday, we will have to re-bid and work with the Arkansas Natural Resources on refinancing."
Currently, the loan interest rate would be 2.95 percent but if a re-bid takes place, the rate will go higher and the $300,000 saved on the project from the low interest rate would go away. Kajacs Contractors Inc., a heavy construction company from Maumelle, made the bid for $555,000 for the aeration project.
"We bid at the time that all the tank companies were looking for work and they were basically buying the tank to keep their construction crews busy," Ledbetter noted. "Since that has happened, there is one project in northwest Arkansas where Landmark bid on with six tanks in one project. If we don't sign by Monday, they can back out of our contract. They don't have a lot of profit in it anyway and I can see them saying thanks for the opportunity, but we've got things that make us money and we are going to do that. I've tried to get them to delay it until January, but they won't budge."
