FPC - starting over...but with enough time?
Our friend Chan from Weekend Pundit started a new blog site One Voice In Gilford when he ran for Selectman this past election. The latter was supposed to be for the election, but he is now hoping that this new site will be more successful than his run in that he'll be blogging about local stuff here in Gilford (WP is more "other focused").
With that all said, I trundled on over to see what his take on Gilford was and found this:
I have to wonder what was running through the minds of the Gilford Board of Selectmen during yesterday's meeting.
In March the voters of Gilford decided the Facilities Planning Committee should receive $150,000 to put towards the completion of plans for the addition to and renovation of the police station. The FPC had hoped to work with the architect – Stewart Associates of Gilford– to complete those plans and to work with the original general contractor – Horne Construction of Rochester – to come up with a firm will-not-exceed price.
[snip]
..which promptly turned it down and directed the FPC to go back to square one, sending out new bids for a new architect and new contractor. With this decision 15 months of work and almost $50,000 of taxpayer money was flushed down the toilet. (See Laconia Sun article below)
I'm not part of the inside baseball concerning the FPC, but I do know that folks have been a tad upset about the delay. Chan's post did include some musings about the new "schedule" of that as well:
Bidding a new architect will take a minimum of 6 weeks, with 9 weeks being the most likely time line. During that time the FPC will be able to get little if anything done because it cannot go forward without an architect. Once one is selected, it will take between 4 and 8 weeks to complete the plans started under Stewart Associates. Then another 6 to 8 weeks to qualify contractors and to put out a bid to those contractors. After that the selected contractor and the FPC will need time to work on refining the costs of the project. Not counting the last part, which could take an additional 4 to 6 weeks, that takes the time line of this project out to the end of September/beginning of October, a good month or more past the Labor Day deadline requested by the Board of Selectmen. And that's assuming everything goes right the first time. If everything on the time line takes the longest portion of the estimates, we're now out to the end of October, meaning the Board of Selectmen won't see the 'end product' until November or early December, which still leaves us exactly where the FPC was last December, except that an additional $150,000 taxpayers dollars will have been spent.
Kinda seems like situation set up for failure, time wise. Flush the $50K so far, now add another $150K?
Go read his conclusion(s).
