NORTH WEBSTER – Lakeland Regional Sewer board members expressed frustration Thursday with the state response to the plans they submitted. The Indiana office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, which handles funding for the project, responded to the district’s request last month for additional money by saying it needs to further reduce costs and should even consider changing parts of the plan altogether. The state office said it cannot concur with the proposed construction contracts, Casey Erwin with engineering firm DLZ Corp. told the board, which would force the district to dump all the bids it received and start over. The response came completely out of left field to board members, so long after the state office had already seen the plans without raising any such objections. “This wasn’t news to them,” Erwin remarked, saying he already notified the office after construction bids started coming in higher than expected in December. The board decided earlier this year to seek up to $28.8 million in funding after construction bids came in $4 to $5 million higher than the bond they were approved for by USDA-RD. Erwin said he explained to the office that the board had already gone to great lengths to minimize costs, and said there are only minor things left that are possible to change – not millions of dollars worth. Erwin, board attorney Andy Boxberger and board members observed that accepting bids again would delay the project by another month or two, assuming they make no design changes, and that any potential savings would be eaten up by the cost of repeating the bidding process, something that hasn’t been budgeted for. That’s also assuming bids don’t come in higher rather than lower than before. Erwin said the sticking point seems to be an engineer in the state office who has a different design in mind, one that the board heard the Indiana Department of Agriculture hasn’t approved in a long time and that may not be feasible in this case. “If this is a great idea, where were his comments when they approved the initial design?” board President Jim Haney asked. The board voted to arrange a talk with Director Phil Lehmkuhler and other administrators in the state office to hash out disagreement over the design, with the hope it could be done as soon as next week.
