Cost estimates have spiked to build Wilson Gulch Road, which will connect the Mercy Regional Medical Center area to the Bridge to Nowhere interchange at the bottom of Grandview Hill.
La Plata County commissioners discussed the situation last week as part of the Public Works Department report.
Commissioner Bobby Lieb said the original cost estimate was $6.4 million for construction. Now it’s $8.5 million. He wanted to know why.
This is a joint project between the county and the city of Durango. County Public Works Director Jim Davis said the city hired Goff Engineering, and it did the original estimate as part of a grant application last spring to the Colorado Department of Transportation.
“CDOT engineers looked at the numbers after the grant was awarded,” Davis said. The higher estimate includes costs for National Environmental Policy Act compliance, plus CDOT has a 30 percent contingency built into the estimate.
But Davis thinks the new estimate is high. He cited the $1.2 million estimate for improvements on County Road 320 to serve the new Ignacio middle and elementary schools. The bid came back below $800,000, he said.
County Manager Joe Kerby said, “We were surprised by the $8 million for 2014. We are prepared to spend $600,000 to $700,000” – the county’s share of the cost – “based on the original estimate. The new estimate will affect the county’s cost. I have advised that would have to be in our 2015 budget.”
The next step in the project is to draft an intergovernmental agreement, he said.
Lieb said, “When we negotiated this agreement with the city, there were positions by the county that we would pay 33 percent up to a certain standard (of improvements). Additional bells and whistles required or requested by the city that we felt were not necessary, we probably wouldn’t participate in those.”
He continued, “I’m trying to remind everybody of those discussions.” He said he wants “the county to hold the line on those and not just play along with some of the shopping sprees that might occur.”
According to the county’s 2014 budget message, the county has agreed in concept to a cost-sharing arrangement with Durango for 33 percent of actual construction costs, up to a maximum county cost of $1.98 million.
The city has gotten a CDOT RAMP grant that could reduce the county contribution to around $696,000, according to the budget message.
That would come out of the Capital Improvements Fund instead of the Road and Bridge budget “due to the significant depletion of the Road and Bridge unreserved fund balance. Funding will ultimately depend upon development and approval of an intergovernmental agreement with the city,” the budget message said.
The project will extend an existing road into an area within city limits that is proposed for retail development, the budget message says.
