City Council

MINUTES OF THE CITY OF BRISTOL, TENNESSEE CITY COUNCIL CALLED MEETING December 17,2024 CALL TO ORDER: The City of Bristol, Tennessee City Council called meeting was brought to order by Mayor Vince Turner on Tuesday, December 17, 2024, at 5:00 P.M. in the conference room of the Ewell Easley Municipal Annex. ROLL CALL: Present: Mayor Vince Turner, Councilwoman Margaret Feierabend, Councilman Mahlon Luttrell, and Councilwoman Lea Powers. City staff members present included City Attorney Danielle Smith, Director of Administration Mary Lee Williams, Director of Utility Services Mark Quickel, Director of IT Savio Dias, and other members of City staff. INVOCATION AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE: Director of Administration Mary Lee Williams gave the invocation and Councilman Mahlon Luttrell led the pledge of allegiance. ORDINANCES AND RESOLUTIONS: A. Resolutions Resolution 24-163 - A Resolution Awarding Bid for the Shelby Street Booster Pump Station Upgrade Director of Utility Services Mark Quickel explained this item along with the following item for pump station projects came in over budget. The City's portion of the costs of the responsive low bid for the Shelby Street pump station upgrade was higher than the City's original budgeted amount by $186,333.33. Funding for the City's portion of the project was originally projected to be $222,700.00 but has now increased to $409,033.33. The overall bid submitted by J. Cumby Construction, Inc., is $1,671,000.00. The upgrade project is funded by the American Rescue Plan (ARP) grant contract with the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation (TDEC) in the amount of approximately $1.2 million. Mayor Turner asked what contributed to the overage costs. Mr. Quickel said the majority of the cost is labor due to inflation and competitive job markets and went on to explain there were four bidding parties that pre-qualified to bid but only one submitted a responsive bid. A second bidder showed up late to the bid opening, but since they were late the bid could not be accepted or opened so no comparison is possible. After the bid opening, the project engineer reached out to the other three companies that had expressed interest. One had been awarded another bid about two weeks earlier and they did not want to overcommit their resources. Another company was in the calculation process and became overloaded with other bids and they set this project bid aside. The third company was interested but arrived at the bid opening late and they are based in Bristol, Virginia.