Pond project hits setback

FRANKLIN — The long-awaited Franklin Pond walking trail faced a setback Tuesday when the Borough Council declined to accept either of the bids submitted for the project.
The decision came with the recommendation of borough attorney Thomas Prol, who said both the bids submitted for the work were significantly higher than project estimates from the borough engineer. Prol advised the council to exercise their right to reject the offers.
Prol said the borough engineer's estimate for the project put the price tag at around $86,000. After putting the work out to bid earlier this year, Prol said the council received two offers to complete the path for either just under $149,000 or $180,000.
While Prol said the engineer's estimate topped the bid offers for certain aspects of the work, he said the opposite was true in at least six categories of construction. In some cases, Prol said, the bidder's offers were double, triple or even quadruple what the borough engineer had figured.
By way of example, Prol said the engineer had estimated a cost of $5,000 for “mobilization,” but the bids in that category amounted to $10,000 and $18,000. Prol said the bids also included expenses of $18,000 and $19,000 for “clearing the site,” a task the engineer had also estimated at a cost of $5,000.
“We put (the project) out to bid at what we thought was going to be a fair and equitable price and unfortunately the people who were bidding on it felt as though we wanted to pave it with gold instead of asphalt,” Mayor Nicholas Giordano said. “So the bids did come in substantially higher than they should have.”
According to Borough Administrator Alison Littell McHose, planning for the pond path has been under way for several years. The plan includes a more than 2,000-footlong paved trail loop around the perimeter of Franklin Pond. The bid specifications for the project call for the path to be 5 feet wide.
Though the exact reason for the disparity between the estimated cost and the bids was unknown, McHose speculated the width of the path could have played a role in generating the high figures. McHose said many companies have equipment at the ready to carve an eight foot wide path, but said a smaller width might require more labor by hand.
Giordano said the walking path initiative and other Franklin Pond revitalization efforts are part of the borough's plan to “help bring a little bit of family friendliness back into Franklin.”
The council had originally hoped to complete the pond path in time for the Franklin Carnival in July, but Tuesday's decision means the project end date will likely be pushed back to the late summer or early fall. McHose told the council if they put the project out for bid immediately, the path would probably be completed sometime in September barring further delays.
But the walking path won't be the only thing getting paved in Franklin this year.
Giordano said Tuesday the borough has received a $165,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation to finish paving on Main Street.