After years of debate, the Village of Cache Creek is finally going ahead with renovations to the basement of the Community Hall.
Council voted at its June 27 meeting to proceed with awarding the contract to Silver Spur Construction Ltd. out of Pritchard for $203,250.
Silver Spur was the lowest of six bidders, the highest being Vector Projects Group Ltd. at $278,154. Tri City Contracting Ltd. was the second lowest at $209,700.
Mayor John Ranta noted that Council would have to amend its budgt, since it nly allowed $200,000 for the work. Besides the actual construction work, the project also including engineering fees, taxes and a $30,000 contingency allocation which they hope they won’t have to use - for an overall budget of $270,120.
“You lost me,” said Ranta, who voted against the contract award. “I was looking forward to getting something done.”
Treasurer Lori Pilon advised Council that without the operable door that divides the main room downstairs into two smaller meeting rooms, the cost is $245,000.
“That’s a lot over (budget),” he said.
“The tenders actually came in under (budget),” said Pilon.
The reason behind going to tender, said Ranta, was to get a feel for the costs. “We specified that the low tender may not be accepted.”
He said local contractors told him they hadn’t heard about the tender, and he speculated that a local contractor might be able to do the work for less money.
“The community’s been waiting for a long time to get this done,” said Coun. Ida Makaro. “We went over (budget) on the Coverall also. We need to move forward on the Hall.”
“I don’t feel it’s going to get any cheaper as time goes on,” agreed Coun. Darrell Rawcliffe.
Ranta was the only one to vote against the motion. Coun. Wyatt McMurray was attending the meeting by telephone, but was not available for the vote.
The work on the Hall begins this week. The InfoCentre and main storage will remain the same, but the existing washrooms will be upgraded, the TV Society will get its own room and a large multi-purpose room will be created that can be turned into two meeting rooms.