WESTON, WI (WSAU) — A final bid has been approved for a new municipal facility in Weston.
Monday night the Village of Weston Board of Trustees discussed a recommended bid for the Village’s new municipal facility. The recommended bid from the Building Committee is for a base building of 23,117 square feet with VRF HFVAC system, a repair bay crane, a vehicle and mobile column lifts, and two manual vehicle wash bays done by Neenah-based Miron Construction.
RELATED: Village of Weston Building Committee Approves Municipal Facility Bid Recommendation
During the discussion, board members heard from Building Committee Chair Mort McBain about the specific features of the recommended bid, Village Administrator Keith Donner about the financing for the project, and Kueny Architects Jon Wallenkamp about the specific construction features of the bid.
After hearing from the three presenters about the recommended bid, the Board went into a lengthy discussion about the building and it’s different features. There was some concern about the base building being too big, brought up by Board President Mark Maloney.
“This building is desperately for the road crew, for the public works, unbelievable. And yes the office. I mean my gosh we could have done something 30, 20 years ago at least. I just think, are we doing too much?”.
Maloney’s concerns with the base building focused on the additional 20 feet of office space that could be taken out with a different alternate recommendation. The building committee went with the larger base building to anticipate the future growth of the Village, projected to have grown by 22,000 residents by 2040.
After going through the cost of the alternates for both versions of the base bid, the Board voted to go with the larger version as the Finance Committee had approved enough funding to cover the cost of the project as explained by Maloney.
“I think we can still, with 15 million, we can still build the big building. I want to make sure everyone knows that. Bob [Bender] didn’t actually say he just wants the financing to be 15 verses 15.5. Both options are there,”.
The Board did receive some public comment at the meeting opposing the building project due to the lack of a referendum for tax payers. But with the project already several years in the works Maloney says it wouldn’t be possible to set it back even further to delay it for a referendum.
“Otherwise we’d have to stop this process, which would never happen, and then we’d go back 2 or 3 or 4 years to start this all over. Which would be horrible. And I’ll defend that with anyone that calls me, anyone that stops me in the street. We need to understand what’s happening here and how we have to move forward,”.
After close to two hours of discussion, the Board voted 5 to 2 to approve the recommended bid for the construction of the Municipal Facility. The bid submitted by Miron Construction will cost $14,372,787 that is covered by the approved $15,000,000 in financing by the Finance Committee and the Board of Trustees.
