VIROQUA, Wis. – The Viroqua city Council accepted low bids for construction of a new salt shed and a reconstruction project on Center Avenue at their regular city council meeting on May 27.
The city has been discussing the need for a new salt shed for years and the council approved a low bid of $561,600 from O’Shea Construction. The base bids on the project ranged from $503,000 to $636,000, and once all the alternates were tabulated, the final cost ended up at $561,600.
City Engineer and Public Works Director Sarah Grainger said the new shed is much needed as the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has been pushing the city for years to build a new building that was compliant with state regulations and met the need of the city salt usage. Grainger said the city was not able to store all the yearly salt needed for a winter season. Grainger said the old shed was supposed to be able to store 600 tons of salt but really did not have that much capacity. The new structure will be able to store 800 tons, allowing the city to store enough salt to last the year.
The council also approved a low bid of about $2.9 million from Badger Environmental to reconstruct Center Avenue that not only includes street work but new water and sewer as well. The project work area will include Center Avenue from Parkinson to South Street, one block of Court Street, two blocks of Jefferson Street and Terhune along the way.
Grainger said the Center Avenue reconstruction has also been in the works for some time and was in danger of being delayed when the project lost the opportunity for Congressional Directed Spending funds through Congressman Derrick Van Orden’s office. Grainger said the project was on the Congressman’s list for funding but the project was not included with the most recent congressional bill.
Despite that setback Grainger said they did have funding from other sources that the project could lose if they did not move forward including $930,000 from the DOT and $390,000 from the DNR for the sewer and water improvements. The project will also be partially funded with about $60,000 from sewer and water department funds.
Grainger said the remaining cost of the project is broken into three parts.
“The street (department) would obviously be funded by the general fund,” said Grainger. “And in this case, what was put forward was that it would be funded by TID (Tax Incremental Finance District) six. The street would pay for the storm sewer costs, the lighting, and a third of the road costs. The water and the sewer in our books …we would put all the water costs and a third of the streets. And then under the sewer utility, we would put all of the sewer costs plus a third of the street.
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