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January 23, 2003 Meeting

hosted by

Public Works Director Thomas O'Loughlin and Town Engineer Warren Hall

 

The following is a transcript made by listening to a videotape  of the event.  I have never before transcribed such a recording and I freely admit to being a rank amateur at transcription.  Consequently there may exist some errors in the transcription and I apologize if such is the case.  In an effort to minimize mistakes, I submitted copies of these transcripts to Mr. O'Loughlin for review by himself and Mr. Hall.  Most of the video tape was audible but there were sections that were either inaudible or undecipherable and these were omitted.  Transcribed by Ronald G. Santa.

 

1) QUESTION: Are we on hold now because of the weather?

     HALL: Yes, too cold for anyone to get out there and work, material is freezing, machines are not operating properly, and that is what we are holding for.  I spoke to the contractor today and he might be here as early as tomorrow.  It is supposed to be in the 20s tomorrow so he’s looking forward to getting back here and doing some more work.

2) QUESTION: Does he have an estimated completion date or is there a date on the contract that he has to complete by?

     HALL: The answer is yes.  He has 180 days to complete the entire project.  The entire project is Turner Road, Wolcott Avenue, Easton Terrace, Judith Court, and a little portion of Center Avenue.

3) QUESTION: Are there penalties associated with not meeting the completion date?

     HALL: There are no penalties associated with them completing on time.  There will be action taken by the Town if it is not done in a reasonable amount of time.

4) QUESTION: Are they going to continue or are they going to stop for a certain amount of time?

     HALL: The answer is that they are going to continue depending upon the weather.  They may be back tomorrow.  If it stays in the 20’s they are going to continue to work.

5) QUESTION: Are they going to continue the drainage or are they going to go back and start the water at the other end.

     HALL: They are going to continue with the drainage.  Once they complete the drainage all the way to Green End then they are going to go back and do the water.

6) QUESTION: You said this was going to be done in 180 days?

     HALL: Yes, 180 working days.

7) QUESTION: From when?  From today?

     HALL: No.  He started on October 7th.

8) QUESTION: I’m concerned because I have a nursery on that road.  We are going to be getting busy with trucks and orders come the middle of March and I’m concerned about what’s going to happen.  How are my customers going to get to my place of business?

     HALL: That is an issue we will have to work out during those days when your customers are coming in.  We will have to leave a lane open for them to get by.

9) QUESTION: That is impossible for me to know when they are going to be coming in.

     HALL: The road is closed but I want to say that if we tell the contractor to make it passable for a situation like that, he will accommodate us.

10) QUESTION: On that water line, is it going to be tied into Gaudet School?  Because we have a hydrant at the Gaudet School which is a dead end.  That should be tied into the 12” water supply.

       HALL: No, there isn’t any plan to tie into the Gaudet School.  It is going to be tied into Ward Avenue up to Columbia Road.  And it is also going to be tied into Green End and at Wyatt.

11) QUESTION: That hydrant would have a lot more pressure off this 12” than we have off the other end

       HALL: I agree with that.  There are different lines up there.  Some of them are high pressure and some are low pressure

12) QUESTION: Wasn’t there a hydrant there by the street next to Wick’s property years ago?  I thought the line froze and they abandoned that line.

       HALL: I don’t know that.  I’ve got Chief Carlise here.

       CHIEF CARLISE: I’ve never seen a hydrant there.  No.  There is one by the State garage.

13) QUESTION: From a scheduling standpoint, I know weather is a factor right now but what is completed?  What is coming?  When is it coming?  What can be finished?  And what is going to be going on in front of the properties?  Water line – when is that going to start?

       HALL: Depending on the weather, I would think that if we wanted to lock the contractor into a schedule he would say wait a minute I’m not going to get busy down there until March 1st.  Right now he is just kind of peddling away at it and picking away at it as best he can.  Which is fine.  Come March 1 he’s going to have to start back on the storm drain.  He probably has two weeks left on the storm drain.  Two weeks to complete the storm drain.  After the storm drain, say another three weeks to complete the water, that’s five weeks.  That gets us into the middle of April. Now he’s got to grind the road, reclaim it, shape it, compact it.  That’s five days there.  He should be off Turner Road by the first or second week in May.

14) QUESTION: Is that 180 days for Turner Road or for the whole contract?

       HALL: The 180 days is for the whole contract.

15) QUESTION: Wolcott and Easton Terrace is yet to do?  Is there much to do over there?

       HALL: No, the scope of work is not as much as Turner Road.  Road resurfacing and a little bit of drainage.

16) QUESTION: Is there a reason for the fact that they have been doing work so intermittently like down at Wyatt Road and up by Hoogendorn and back and forth?

       HALL: They jump around a few times because of a problem getting the structures, the catch basins that go in the ground.  He had to order those, he had lead time on those and for some reason that is how they were arriving and he was kind of hop scotching back and forth.

17) QUESTION: Will the drainage and water be on the same side?  Is that the west side?

       HALL: When it gets down in front of your home down there, yes it will be.

18) QUESTION: How far will they be apart?

       HALL: The drainage and water pipes will be about two feet apart

19) QUESTION: You can’t put them in at the same time in that area.  Dig only one trench?

       HALL: We might be able to do that.  We might be able to put them in the same trench.

20) QUESTION: Storm drain and water pipes in the same trench?  They are never going to approve that.

       O'LOUGHLIN: Only two feet apart, they are basically going to be in the same trench anyway.  The reason he hasn’t started the water anyway is that obviously the water decision was delayed and it was the situation that we had to get the City of Newport approval before he could even get started.  Otherwise if we had the approval we would have already been working on it.

21) QUESTION: Has it already been approved?

       HALL: Yes it has.  We have the approval to go ahead with the water.

22) QUESTION: Who is paying for the water?  What about those of us who already have sewer?

       O'LOUGHLIN: We can’t answer those questions tonight.  Basically, tonight is for questions on construction.  Those kind of questions can be answered by the Finance Department.

       HALL: I can comment on that briefly.  I know that if you have existing sewer installed, you will not pay anything for the new sewer installation.

23) QUESTION: Will the pipes be going under the road or under the sidewalk?  Where will they be placed?

       HALL: They will be in the road.

24) QUESTION: How can we be charged retroactively for something that doesn’t exist.

       HALL: That is a question for the Finance Director and the Administrator.  That is not a question for the Town Engineer and Public Works Director to answer.  I don’t have that information to give you a proper answer.

25) QUESTION: I missed what you said in the beginning but you said this project can go into April?

       HALL: Should be about May.  First or second week in May to be off Turner Road and you will have a binder coat put down.  Then he is off to another few projects around the Town.  Expect him back in like October probably to put the top on Turner Road.

26) QUESTION: What can be done in the mean time to improve the road surface which is deteriorating daily?

       HALL: First of all that is a temporary surface that is up there right now.  He has got to maintain the surface.  The surface has to be passable.  It has to be safe to have a fire truck, police truck, rescue wagon go down to make a call on Turner Road.

27) QUESTION: Is it considered to be passable in its present condition?

       HALL: Yes it is.

28) QUESTION: We live on it.  It has got to be passable and it is barely that now without destroying your car.

       HALL: Okay.  That temporary patch that goes down is not free.  Everybody pays for it.  It is not free.  So you’ve got to cut it off.  You have to have a limit where that is good enough for a temporary situation.  Safe for police, fire, and rescue. And that’s where we are coming from.  I mean if we want to force him to grind it up and put a binder coat on, similar to the other main roads in Town, that’s going to cost the Town money.  Typically, you don’t do that.

29) QUESTION: What’s it going to take to have him just patch the big holes?

       HALL: He is charged to patch those big holes to fill in the pot holes.  He has to maintain the temporary patch that is out there and maintain the condition of the road to a level that the police is happy with,  the Public Works Director is happy with, and the Fire Department is happy with.

30) QUESTION: So how often is that inspected?

       O'LOUGHLIN: It gets inspected daily and if any resident notices a pothole they can notify our office.  We have cell phone numbers of the people who work for Dicon.  If its noticed over the weekend, all of us are local, we drive the road.  If we notice anything, we call them directly.  We get them down whether it is a weekend or a weekday.  It is my opinion right now that the temporary patch is in pretty good shape.  I drive the road almost every day and if we notice anything, we call them.  The police have their numbers so if on a weekend a call is placed for a bad situation, they will be notified that they have to come down and respond.

31) QUESTION: It appears to me that the Town is stalling in telling the residents of Turner Road what it is going to cost them to put this sewer and water in.  Someone in the Town must know what it is going to cost.  Every time you talk to someone, everybody says I don’t know, talk to this one and that one.  Some of you people must know what it is going to cost the residents to install this water and sewer on Turner Road.  You can’t get an answer from anybody.

       COUNCILMAN PAUL RODERIQUES:  I’ll answer that.  The residents of Turner Road, some of them, came to a meeting and said when they were digging it up, “we didn’t ask for sewer” but you are putting in sewer.  The drainage needed it and we weren’t sure it needed drainage.  And then they said what we really needed was water because I think there were ten houses or so that had bad wells and, Paul you are one of them.  So we said you know what, the new Council takes over and says you know what, it does make sense, while the road is being dug up, to put in water.  At that particular time they said, we are willing to pay for water – the ones that were there, not all of them, some of them.  Well as things progressed at the next meeting or two, some of the residents came back in three weeks, the same residents, said we are not willing to pay for the water.  So right now the Council is struggling with whether we should charge them the full rate.  There was no hidden agendas.  We said if you’re going to get water pipes, you are going to pay for it.  That was right up front.  But how were they going to pay for it?  We didn’t have a mechanism to charge them like we do frontage on sewer.  We didn’t have that because Newport runs the water department and controls all the water lines in Middletown.  So we said let’s get some enabling legislation so we can charge for water because we want to be able to give you the services.  I’d love to be able to stand up here and say I’ll give you the services for free but I can’t do that.  At this day and age, you can’t afford to do that as a Town.  I can probably speak for the other six council members, we’d love to do that.  We just can’t afford to do that as a Town.  So what we are saying now from a time standpoint, they put enabling legislation date back to this new fiscal year which started on July 1, 2002.  So that it encompasses the whole budget for this fiscal year that we are in.  So I can tell you this, name some of the councilmen that are in favor of only changing a certain percentage, and some might be in favor of charging the whole thing, and some might be in favor of charging none.  Nothing.  I can’t speak for the council, I can only speak for myself and really tell you I’m trying to give you what is going on with the payments and everything. We are waiting to get the enabling legislation and once that goes through then we will have to decide as a group, as a Council, and sit down and figure out what we are going to do for you.  But I know as a point of fact as for making a decision as a council person responsible for the whole town -  I understand the situation at Turner Road that it was going to be free.  But I am certain we are going to do the best we can for the residents and I sympathize with some of the people that have to pay for sewer and water at the same time and put up with the conditions that weren’t right from the start.  We’re trying to make improvements and we’re trying to do the best we can.

       HALL: If you’re interested in what your final charges are going to be.  There are two charts that are outside the Finance Department in the Town Hall.  You can go down there and find your plat and lot number and there is the sewer charge and the water charge for each lot listed.

32) QUESTION: What is the plan for the paving of the road?  Is it going to be scraped?  Over the years there has been blacktop on top of blacktop.  Some of the areas on the lower end in a heavy rain water comes right over the top into the property.

       HALL: Those areas will receive special attention.  Your driveway is wet, I know that and I think there’s another driveway up there that has the same problem.  We’re going to lower the grade a little bit and get the water to back flow over there into your driveway.  There will be a two inch wide lip.  It will be ground and reclaimed, reshaped, compacted.  Then we will put over two inches of binder coat down.  That binder will sit for a six month period so we can find out if there is any movement or if we have any problems.  As far as laterals, we can address that with the finish coat.  The finish coat will be on probably October-November this year.  That’s dependant on the schedule of the contractor.

33) QUESTION: I was just going to ask are driveways being addressed?

       HALL: Yes, in fact we are installing a catch basin at your driveway.

34) QUESTION: Following what Mr. Ardito said, when we have the final coat put on that road are we avoiding something like High Street I hope.  Are we going to have another patchwork quilt?  Is Turner Road going to be another patchwork quilt like High Street?

       HALL: It is not planned to be.  It is not going to be as far as my control goes.  There is a problem on High Street that wasn’t addressed and that is what happened.  You ended up with patch work.  This road - we don’t plan roads that way.

35) QUESTION: Just from residents standpoint when I think about roads being major construction.  To me that is a lot of work involved.  So I look at it I think right away initially what has happened there, the initial condition of the road was horrible.  I know it was weather driven but we got on the contractor and they got much better but from a quality standpoint when this is a completed project I’m thinking it'll end up with, Theresa touched on it, not like High Street but like Wyatt Road.  And I know you do compaction tests now but could you let the residents know what the procedures to make sure that things like this don’t happen and if they do happen, how long do we hold that contractor responsible for that work before we start releasing bond money that we hold back in case something does happen if they don’t fix it.  Can you run through that process a little bit for them.

       HALL: The quality control that is on Turner Road and the rest of the project is that we perform compaction tests.  We have a consultant that comes in and does compaction tests when we ask them for them.  The minimum required number of tests is based on how deep the trench is, how long the trench is.  If we see the contractor not putting the proper effort into compaction, then we automatically call our testing agency.  They come up and do a test right there.  We find out whether it is good or bad, right on the spot.  We have them take it out and remove some material.  As far as the finish grades go, we are going to pay attention to the finished grades and make sure we don’t have any sags.  Catch basins have to be set at the right grade.  That’s what I’ll say.  We have done a fair number of roads that have come out good and acceptable.

36) QUESTION: How long do you hold that bond for?

       HALL: The bond is held for one or two years.  I’ll have to check to see precisely what his bond says but it is at least one year from the time that we accept the project which I’m guessing is going to be some time about October-November this year.

37) QUESTION: And you keep a portion of that money?  You don’t release the whole bond?

       HALL: We keep 5% of his earned money for six months.  There is a performance bond that the contractor has sitting in the Town Hall right now that expires either in a year or two years, I’m not sure which one it is.  It depends on who the bonding company is.  A year or two years and that is from the time we accept the project.

38) QUESTION: I think we can show an example of what went on at High Street where we still have the bond and there are things in the works to rectify the problem

       HALL: That is correct.  We still have the bond on High Street.  We still have a fair amount of …..

       QUESTION: The same thing could happen on Turner Road

       HALL: Earned the cash.  The guy has earned the cash but we keep five percent.  Every time he gets paid, we keep five percent.

39) QUESTION: How about the sidewalks on Turner Road?  Are they going to be done?

       HALL: Sidewalks are not part of the project

40) QUESTION: What about the grass on the shoulder of the road

       HALL: That will be done in the planting season like April to June or so.

       QUESTION: Is that about when the first coat is put on?

       HALL: Yes. Yes.  About the time of the first coat.  But he has a window in which he has to plant the grass seed or he doesn’t get paid for it

       QUESTION: When does the window end?

       HALL: It is March 15th through April 15th.

41) QUESTION: Are there any traffic calming elements that are going to be constructed to prevent it becoming a throughway again?

       HALL: There isn’t any real traffic calming elements.  No.  We will have white stripes on the travel lane and the new yellow center line, but there are no plans to add any traffic calming elements.

42) QUESTION: Obviously you are going to have a crosswalk at Gaudet.  Right?

       HALL: Yes

       QUESTION: Has there been mention of a flashing light right there to slow down traffic with the Council?  I’ve read things in the paper.

       O'LOUGHLIN: Right now we are in the process of putting speed limit lights, 20 MPH, on Aquidneck Avenue.  We have spoken to the School Department about looking at Turner Road.  So if it is something the residents are interested in as far as having the same flashing lights at either entrance and that would slow traffic down, you can either bring your concerns to my office or you can forward it to the Town Administrator or the School Department.  We have begun talking about it – where the front of the school is critical first.  Turner is a town road and we can do that a lot easier internally, within the Town we can address those concerns.

43) QUESTION: They do fly down there and heavy trucks go through there too.  Electric corporation trucks and heavy trucks cutting through to go to Newport.  Can we make it no thru trucks?

       HALL: I’m not sure we can or not.  We’ll find out.  It is a good question.  I know there is a concern with that street because it is used by the nursery.  The nursery has some trucks.

       QUESTION: The nursery trucks seem to go the speed limit.  They seem to respect that neighborhood.  It’s the utility trucks.  There are dump trucks.  There’s a lot of commercial vehicles.  There are charter buses coming through there.  They don’t need to be in a residential area.

       O'LOUGHLIN: The only thing that we can address with those kind of concerns is through the Police Department.  What happens is if we go through the Police Department and then bring it to the Council then we can look at any of those concerns as far as …. There has to be an ordinance in place before we can actually make a change on that road.  So if you do have any concerns again you can either forward them to my office, we can put it together, or put it together as a group.  We can take it to again the Police Chief can investigate what we can and can’t do and then propose something to the Council so that the Council can vote on Turner Road as far as ordinances.

44) QUESTION: One thing you can do is enforce the speed limit.  A short path becomes a lot less attractive.  I think the problem you have is that a lot of people know the short path – not only people who live here but people who have business passing through.  If it becomes not such a good thing, it also becomes known very quickly.  The law is already there.  There is a sign up.

       QUESTION: Would it be too much inconvenience for us to put 3-way stop signs at Ward Avenue and Ward Street?

       O'LOUGHLIN: And that falls under the same thing.  The Police Department has to evaluate it and if they feel it is worth while then we can propose an ordinance to the Council and the Council would vote on it…………….. Because there has to be an ordinance in place or it doesn’t hold any weight.  If someone violates a stop sign that doesn’t have an ordinance, they can’t actually be fined.  We have to make sure there is an ordinance in place before we begin putting up stop signs.

       HALL: We’ll look into it.

45) QUESTION: As far as weight limits go, they would have to be pretty substantial.  We have tractor trailers come in.

       HALL: Right

46) QUESTION: What is the plan for Turner Road and Green End?  Are they supposed to square that off?

       HALL: That has been talked about.  I’ve done a little bit of work on it as far trying to realign how the traffic intersects out there and look at some of the sight vistas coming down Green End Avenue or rather looking up Green End from Turner.  It is not part of the contract right now.  I'd like to say that it is possible to entertain maybe get a consultant involved and take a look at some of the improvements at that intersection.

47) QUESTION: If it is cheaper to do it now, can we get with the contractor and modify the contract and get it done?  I know there will have to be some decisions made, which is fine.

       HALL: We would have the contractor modify that intersection and I would guess most likely at no cost.  You're going to have grass where you were going to have asphalt.  Just restripe it and realign it but I want to be sure this intersection works better than what is out there right now.  We have looked at it from two different directions, some zoning issues out there, and that's where we are right now.  It is going to go unlooked at.

48) QUESTION: I have a few questions on the bid specification.  Why did the bid specification include tree removal?

       HALL: The tree removal was included in the bid spec and the scope of the work basically was in the scope because existing storm drain runs down Turner Road right now underneath a fair number of trees.  So in order to replace that storm drain we would have had to remove the trees to get the storm drain replaced.  After we talked with the tree warden, we decided not to do that.

49) QUESTION: A lot of those trees were just planted for a couple of years.  Those were going to be reinstalled, the same trees?

       HALL: No, they were going to be removed and replaced.

50) QUESTION: Why wasn't the tree warden consulted prior to the scope of the work?

       HALL: I don't know.

51) QUESTION: When the RCP pipe was bid why wasn't there an alternate bid for the SDR pipe or an addendum price?

       HALL: Because the price between the SDR-35 pipe is more expensive, the RCP pipe is cheaper but it is more expensive to install the RCP pipe than it is to install the plastic pipe.  And also we have learned from other projects, the plastic pipe becomes sometimes difficult to get in the larger diameters, 24 inch and 18 inch diameters.  We ended up substituting some pipes in a little less quality for those size diameters in other projects.  So I wanted to be certain that we bid the concrete pipe, in case the plastic pipe was not available in those large diameters.  And also the plastic pipe hydraulically is superior to the concrete pipe, so plastic pipe is my preferred pipe.

52) QUESTION: Why can't that be bid at two separate prices?  If you got it, you got it.  If you don't, you don't.  As far as the total bid goes.

       HALL: We could do that.

       QUESTION: I know that the labor is quite more expensive on 8 foot sections rather than 13 foot sections and you're talking a couple of men and a machine to put in the cement pipe where you don't need that to put in the plastic pipe.

       HALL: That's correct.  So the cement pipe is labor intensive.  The plastic pipe is more expensive per foot to purchase that pipe.

       QUESTION: Follow-up question please.  Next contract which I am really worried about, do you intend to make both pipes bid or are we going to do it the same way in future contracts, bidding one pipe and using a different pipe?  Because it is unfair to various contractors, there may have been a lower bidder bidding on the plastic pipe than on the concrete pipe.  But you only required them to bid on the concrete pipe and then we had the plastic pipe put in without any addendum or alternate bid.  So I'm asking in future contracts are we going to do it the same way of one pipe bid or are we going to have both pipes bid?

       HALL: We could do it with both pipes.  After this contract we have seen that we have had so much attention on the type of pipe that was bid and so on and so forth that we may take a look at that with our new Road & Utilities committee to see how they feel about it and I'd look to them for some guidance on that.  Every bidder that bid this project was told the exact same bid specifications, type of pipe to bid and so on and so forth.  It was all the same, everybody was right there.

       QUESTION: Everybody bid concrete?

       HALL: That's correct.

53) QUESTION: Question on the ledge removal with this contract.  That was a zero bid item on the contract overall.  It is understandable that you don't know what you are going to run into, but there is a price required on the bid.  Is there some way to qualify the price that you will pay for removal of ledge from a project before the bid goes out.  If the contractor wants the bid, he will accept that price, I mean a fair price..  Because we got from $62 per cubic yard to $750 per cubic yard and that is a big chunk of dough if we did hit ledge, so far we have been lucky.

       HALL: I don't know.  I would again get some guidance from somebody else and find out whether or not you can actually give a unit price that a contractor would have to accept, to accept the project.

       O'LOUGHLIN: It is also difficult for a contractor to give a fixed price on something they haven't seen.  Because some piece of ledge is going to pull up easier and other cases it is going to be solid rock.  We have the experience working with contractors that if we look at a situation and know that if we look at a situation and we also have people out there on a daily basis and we're watching them do the ledge removal, we'll see what the intensity is from that and we're going to negotiate that back with them.  And obviously if it is a situation that they are taking a machine and they are pulling out some pieces of shale and other things, of course that is not ledge removal.  But it is difficult because you could have a situation where you can have one rock that takes you 20 hours to break up and you can have other situations where you have three times the quantity but you could remove it in a short period of time.

54) QUESTION: There was a big boulder in front of my house that was dug out and push across the street.  It took them 20 minutes to remove it.

       O'LOUGHLIN: My feeling is that if we evaluate the effort that they put into removing it and if it takes them 20 minutes, we can say to them, hey, we're not going to approve a change order for $10,000 for something that took you 20 minutes.  But if we can see the effort and we can evaluate the effort, that is probably the best way to do it because the contractors that are going to be bidding and if they are nervous about what they may uncover in that road, that unit price is going to be a lot higher or they are going to take some risks.  It is probably a better situation where we actually evaluate every price or every area.  We can say that we have five cubic yards that you are going to remove, we are going to be there when you do it, you can't remove it without our presence.  We will see what kind of effort goes into it, what type of machinery goes into it, and then we will evaluate the change order so it is fair to everybody.

55) QUESTION: Follow-up.  I think that is a perfect solution during construction.  My problem with ledge is the bidding.  By having a quantity of zero in the bid spec, you allow the contractor to put in an exorbitant price because it does not impact his final total.  It will not eliminate him as a low bidder.  If you look at Dicon's bid on ledge, they are completely out of sight on the average of the other guys and certainly way out of sight of the low guy.  That is because Dicon's is low bidder and there is zero quantity in the spec of ledge.  So he puts $750 per cubic yards.  I suggest that the zero quantity on the spec is what is wrong.  I know you can't estimate how much ledge is there.  I know we don't know what you are going to find until we dig, but in terms of defining who is going to be low bidder, you can specify 1000 cubic yards or 100 cubic yards and let them bid on it.  And if Dicon were to bid $750 per cubic yard for 100 cubic yards, they wouldn't have been low bidder.  They were allowed to bid this ridiculously high price because of the zero quantity.  That is what is wrong in the spec and my question is, as I say I am more worried about the next contract than I am now, what are you going to do in future contracts?  Are we going to be more careful in regard to ledge quantities?

       O'LOUGHLIN: We can put a minimum quantity amount in and just so it does put a dollar amount effect to it.  The question is we do have to come up with a better formula to do that to just keep it fair but most likely we will get a lower price from that bidder.

       QUESTION: Yes.  There is no way Dicon would have bid $750 per cubic yards.

       O'LOUGHLIN: We also have to look at the minimum quantity we choose.  Because we have to make it so that if they highball it, it is going to make a difference with their overall competitive price with everybody else.

56) QUESTION: You realize that removal by machine is not considered ledge?  If you dig it out with your machine whether it is a hard product or ripped up, it is not ledge.

       O'LOUGHLIN: Exactly.

       QUESTION: I have a follow-up on that.  That boulder was dug out with a machine.  Was that boulder paid as ledge?

       HALL: Yes, the boulder was paid as ledge.  We paid for one yard removal of that boulder,

       QUESTION: A machine took it out?

       HALL: It is ledge.  The way I understand it, he spent extra effort removing that boulder.  The effort cost him time.  He called it ledge.  There isn't anything that says that if you can dig it out with a machine.  What if it is shale type material and he can dig it out with a machine but he has to go a lot slower?  It is not like he is digging out that nice fill.

57) QUESTION: Uncle Sam say if you take it out with a machine, you don't get paid for ledge.

       O'LOUGHLIN: That's not true.

       HALL: If you say Uncle Sam says it, send it over to me in writing.  We'll entertain it, we'll put it in our next specification.

58) QUESTION: Just a thought.  Most of the towns in Massachusetts now go with it has to be a yard minimum.  In Massachusetts they are pulling boulders, around here we have ledge.  When it comes to a point to measure it up, if it's one yard they pay for it.  If it is anything less, they don't.

       HALL: So in Massachusetts the rule is if the boulder is greater than a yard it gets paid for.  If the boulder is less than a yard, he doesn't get paid for it.

       QUESTION: Well I dug one of mine in Portsmouth and I didn't get paid for it in Portsmouth.

       HALL: In Portsmouth Manny.

59) QUESTION: How much did that actually cost the Town?

       HALL: One yard.  $750.  We measured, it was about a two yard boulder.

60) QUESTION: And my point is that same cubic yard by any other contractor would have been $300.  Now that's only $450 more but Dicon was allowed to bid an exorbitant price on the zero quantity.  So please in the future, don't put bid specs that way.  We don't know what kind of ledge.  If we hit ledge on this road all the way down, Dicon would bankrupt the Town of Middletown because of that one item.

       HALL:  That's what you think, but if we hit ledge all the way down that storm drain that's going in the ground, all I would have done is I would have taken it and would have started taking out the trees.  That was my thought.  That's why I knew that the storm drain was going to go in with probably zero quantity of ledge.  Because there is already a storm drain in the ground.

       QUESTION: How about the sewer ledge?

       HALL: The sewer was unknown, I will say that.  1800 feet.

61) QUESTION: Just fix it on the bid spec.  Don't let a contractor do this.  That is all I'm asking.  Don't have zero quantity bid items, it just allows a contractor.

       HALL: It is a good point and we take it.

62) QUESTION: Do you have any idea when this is all going to be done?  Are you going to be working during the summer?

       HALL: We won't be working during the summer.  The plan is to have the contractor off Turner Road sometime about the middle of May.  Hopefully sooner.

       QUESTION: Is that when the 180 days stop?

       HALL: The 180 days excludes weather below a certain temperature, if it's raining.  He gets credit for those days.

       O'LOUGHLIN: They are not calendar days, they are working days.

       QUESTION: So May is the latest you say?

       HALL: Depends on the weather and no unusual conditions, he should be out of there about the middle of May.  That will be the binder asphalt down.  Then he comes back in October-November and puts the top asphalt down.

       QUESTION: So he won't be there July through September?

       HALL: If he is still there in July or September, there is a big problem.  There is something that we did not foresee in the ground there.  I think you will be safe in July, August, September.

63) QUESTION: If he gets rained out on Wednesday, what is to stop him from working on Saturday to meet the schedule?   I haven't seen that happen at all so far.

       HALL: Well, Saturday would require overtime for the inspector, the police detail goes to double time or whatever it is.  He has asked to do that and we have told him what he has to do to work on holidays and weekends.

64) QUESTION: The payment for the police comes out of the Town budget or out of the contractor?

       HALL: If it is going to be a holiday or a weekend, the contractor pays for it.  If it is going to be during the week, the Town pays for it.

       QUESTION: So basically there is no way he will work on Saturday if he had to pay for Police!

       O'LOUGHLIN: That is up to him.  He has asked for a holiday.  We gave him the rates that he would have to pay for someone from Public Works and then we gave him the rate on what he would have to pay for the Police detail and he chose not to work for that holiday.

65) QUESTION: Why did it take so long to patch the road once they had to re-rip it up and did it out?  They did the center road pretty quick, they got extra trucks and all that stuff.  But when it they got to the side of the road, it took forever and it was only partial days too.  Two hour days, four hour days and we had Police details assigned there when they worked partial days.

       HALL: I don't know why it took him so long to patch the road.  I can't answer that.

66) QUESTION: It was exactly a month.  You answered the last question that the Town had to pick up the Police detail fees.  Well, the job was shutdown on December 13th and he finished January 10th that the patching was done.  So that was exactly one month and the financial report shows that we spent $10,087 just for Police.  Is that going to be reimbursed because it should have been done right in the first place when they did the road, not to dig it up again.

       HALL: We can look into that.

       O'LOUGHLIN: Just to let you know.  Whenever they do any change orders, it comes in through Warren.  Warren and myself review it.  We sit down with the Finance Director   We're very critical of the reviews.  If he's asking for any money, whether it's any money that was worked on or any change orders, we go through it.  We're not afraid to reject invoices.  We're looking out for the best interest of the Town.

67) QUESTION: Is it possible not to have two-man crews in on these days where the Police have got to man the thing?

       O'LOUGHLIN: These are the things that we can look at.

       HALL: That has been an administrative decision to pay the Police out of the Town.  I don't know if it comes out of the general fund or what fund it comes out of, but to pay the Police out of the general fund.  What we may do in the future, looking at future jobs, is say that the contractor will be responsible to pay the Police detail and make him bid those hours.

68) QUESTION: Right now that amount from the time he started the job until the end of December, we have $33,000 in Police details and the way this job is going we probably will end up with over $100,000 Police fees.

       HALL: I know it adds up.

69) QUESTION: Do we really need the Police there?  Why don't they give them the option of using flaggers, certified flaggers?

       HALL: They were given the option to use flaggers.  That question was raised in the pre-bid and we addressed it that they could use flaggers.

70) QUESTION: Are we going to have them clean up daily?  There is tracks coming out of the nursery where they are storing the stuff.  It is horrible up and down the roads, unbelievable.  I know on other roads it has to be picked up daily if your have tire tracks coming out into the highways and stuff like that so you don't track some dirt down the road.  And there you have stone on the road that tires pick up and other things.  I was wondering why it is not getting enforced any better.  They work until it is time to quit and then just go home.  Nothing is done.

       HALL: I know he had a sweeper there.  We will take a look at that and see if we can have him do a little better housekeeping.

71) QUESTION: I am curious how they are going to preserve the bituminous curbing along the sidewalk at the school.  Are there laterals going in toward the east?

       HALL: There will be water laterals cut across the sidewalks.

72) QUESTION: It seems to me that a significant highway project such as this, that whole sidewalk should have been rebuilt, especially with a public school right there.  It is hard for me to believe that they are not doing anything on the sidewalks.

       HALL: Again the sidewalk question comes up.  It was an administrative decision not to do the sidewalks.  The lip curb is a bid item.  I believe we are going to put a new lip in the whole length and on the other side where we need it we will put Cape Cod curbing.  Nothing on the sidewalk - the sidewalk stays right where it is.  Today.

73) QUESTION: Let's go back a few questions regarding working on Saturday.  You said the contractor can work on Saturdays but he would have to pay his men, the Town inspector overtime, and a policeman.  By working on Saturdays, wouldn't that expedite getting this road done?  And who gives the authority on that, on working on Saturdays?  Does he come to you, the Public Works Director Mr. O'Loughlin to work on Saturdays?

       O'LOUGHLIN: Yes.

       HALL: Yes, he either comes to me and I take it to Tom or he goes to Tom and Tom will bring it to me.

74) QUESTION: Has he come to you and asked to work on Saturdays?

       HALL: He has asked to work on the last holiday that we had.  Last Monday, but we told him no.

       O'LOUGHLIN: We told him its his decision based on these figures for paying overtime.  In other words, if he starts getting close to the date and obviously if he goes past a reasonable time and Warren has a log of every day as far as temperature, days that he can work, days that he can't.  So we're keeping track of where we stand on a calendar on his work days.  So it is an issue that we can evaluate at the end.  If he takes the contract and he knows he has a set time while there is not penalties, if he doesn't finish in a reasonable amount of time, we can again attach his bond.  There are other methods, we just don't have to just have something in place if you don't pass a set.  So if he decides to work on Saturdays because he is getting close to that point, he would still have to incur the cost from the Town.  If the Town decides to work with him and address it, it would have to be a decision that would either come from a recommendation that Warren and I make to the Town Administrator and may make its way to the Town Council.

75) QUESTION: How many days have you allocated to this job?  Work days?

       HALL: I'd have to look that up.  He started October 7th, that was his first day out there.

       QUESTION: How many weather related days have we lost?

       HALL: I don't know that.  I don't think he has lost a whole bunch, maybe ten.  But I'll get back to you on that.

76) QUESTION: Is there any reason why he doesn't have three groups and work different areas of the road?

       HALL: No, there is no reason why.

       QUESTION: We don't really control that do we?

       HALL: We don't control that.

       O'LOUGHLIN: Legally we can't tell the contractor means and methods.  What we do is what I say.  We have a count of the number of work days in the contract.  We look at every day that he can work.  If he goes, again its got to be considered a reasonable amount of time past that date, it is going to be a situation where he would lose so much money.  Anyway it would put him in a bad situation financially and then we would have the bond for the cost of the project.  So if it gets into a time issue on Turner Road, we're not going to allow him onto Wolcott if he is not doing a good job or not finishing up on Turner.  So it is a situation, in the sense of being first on all these projects, you actually have the largest benefit compared to the other sites.  So there are mechanisms in place to make sure that obviously Turner Road has to be in very good shape before he is even allowed to start the other project.  If he wastes his time, it is ultimately going to cost him money.

77) QUESTION: There have been days when he had two men piddling doing nothing.  They count toward his work days?  Right? Okay, so when he is piddling along with two men driving up and down the road doing nothing, he is actually losing days.  We are not adding on some extra days for him as a result of this period of time?

       O'LOUGHLIN: No. We are being very critical with him as far as checking the days he would work.  In many conversations we have had with him, he calls in checking the conditions in Town.  There are a lot of methods that are in place right now that we obviously are checking his work, making sure that he is doing it and that's why you had some of his time where he was re-patching because there was a decision Warren and I made that his patches weren't holding up and that we told him he had to correct it.  So then he lost some of his calendar workdays because he was repairing his own work.  The depth of the frost right now is going to be difficult but in some ways the cold patch is holding up better in this weather.

78) QUESTION: I have a number of questions and have been waiting for most of the others to ask theirs.  First I would like to apologize for being late.  Secondly I would like to thank you for this meeting.  This is refreshing.  I don't think the previous administration would have had this meeting to listen to us.  So I would like to seriously thank you and I'm looking forward to better days with this administration.  Now for some maybe not so easy questions.  On the bid selection, did Dicon's bid of a nickel per cubic yard for trench base material raise any questions?  What about his price of a dollar to readjust a mailbox or a nickel each to adjust an electric manhole or water gates?  Shouldn't these bid items raise a red flag in terms of quality of work of this guy?

       HALL: We asked him about specifically his road material.  The way he explained it to us, he thought as you grind and reclaim that road, he was going to grind 12 inches, it was going to blend together, and that was going to become his 12 inch base.  That was his explanation.

79) QUESTION: Okay you did ask him.  Before awarding the bid to him or after the bid was awarded to him?  Did anybody, be it the Town Council or Administration, question the low bid before the bid was awarded?

       HALL: Yeah, I believe we did.  We met with Dicon.  We, being myself and the Town Administrator.

       QUESTION: And they gave a satisfactory answer to those ridiculous prices?

       O'LOUGHLIN: One thing though.  Those ridiculous prices cost him a lot of money right now because we in turn came back and said your gravel, your base, is not working in these trenches.  So it is a double edge sword for the contractor when they take these risks.  That risk is not paying off for Dicon, I can tell you that.

80) QUESTION: I think we knew that from the beginning.  You can't buy air for a nickel per cubic yard.  Okay.  Dicon's bid for erosion control was also extremely low.  Didn't anybody suspect that these low bids were going to be an indication of poor performance by this company?  And are we going to look at future contracts with a more diligent eye when we see these low individual bid items, especially by the low overall bidder?  Because I think it is indicative, certainly on erosion control.  His erosion control amounted to none around his dirt piles next to my neighbor's yard and it forced it and tipped the fence over as a result of no erosion control.  I guess you could bid a little amount for erosion control if we are not going to do it.  But I assume he had to do it.  But they are there now, now that the fence is down.  Why weren't they there on day one?  I think on future contracts we have got to when we see these red flags of low bid items, especially if it is going to impact performance, we are going to have to some how nail the contractor down before we give him the bid to explain why he is bidding so low and is he going to do the job.  Because yes we may force this guy into doing it and we may wind up forcing this guy into bankruptcy as a result of his ridiculous low bid.  Okay.  Was there ever any consideration of not selecting the low bidder because of these apparent inconsistencies and, more importantly, in the future will we be looking for a better selection process that will allow us to select other than the low bidder?  And what do you think about selecting other than the low bidder?

       COUNCILMAN PAUL RODERIQUES: I'll gladly answer that.  I don't think necessarily that the low bidder is always the best quality.  Based on history, on a whole other project that I was not in favor of, because of past poor performance.  These are things we need to look at.  I know this particular contractor had done work before and it was satisfactory.  Yes, this whole project is going to bring a whole new light and it certainly educated me on the whole bid process.  So I think certainly there were some good points made by you and the other folks in the room that we need to take a much better look and hopefully now with the new Road & Utilities commission we will look at things like that.

81) QUESTION: Moving past the bid selection phase into construction, Dicon began this project up at Wyatt Road with sewer and for the base of the pipe they began using stone dust.  Why did the Clerk of the Works okay this material until it was finally stopped when it was pointed out by a taxpayer?

       HALL: I don't know if it was finally stopped when it was pointed out by a taxpayer.  I think it was stopped when we put an end to it.  And it was very brief that he tried to use stone dust under the pipe - it was two lengths.  The reason that he asked permission to do that, he gave his reasons why he wanted to do that, we thought they were good reasons.  It turns out that after two lengths of pipe was in the ground - 26 feet of pipe in the ground - we said no.  You're not putting the effort into preparing that base for the pipe to sit on, no more stone dust.  The reason  the stone dust was thought to be a better product than stone or gravel that we typically use under a pipe is that gravel or stone actually has voids in them and when you get the weather we have around here and you have got the soils around here, the water gets down to your trench and what happens is that once the water finds a place to run, it gets into that gravel and it has a place to run, it just runs right down your trench and it takes all that surface water along with it.  We have experienced that problem on other projects, we thought the stone dust was a good idea because it is a lot less permeable or it has a lot more resistance to let water flow through it.  We tried that product but we just didn't like the effort that they were doing with that product.  That's where we stopped them.

       QUESTION: You will probably not use it again in any other project?

       HALL: I don't think so.

82) QUESTION: Stone dust compacts very solidly.  I'm not certain that a solid base without the natural give of the gravel is what the pipe needs.  It seems to me that you would want a little bit of give for expansion and contraction for the pipe and stone dust really compacts like a rock.

       HALL: No, the gravel is actually a structural requirement by most of the pipe manufacturers to keep the pipe from what we call egging or compressing.  If the pipe is not properly bedded then what happens it haunches out.

83) QUESTION: Why was Dicon allowed to create mounds of dirt without sediment control barriers?  Why wasn't sediment control used at the beginning and why did the Clerk of the Works allow this?

       HALL: A good question.  I'll just say that at this point that area has been corrected and we will pay closer attention to those details in the future.

84) QUESTION: And this is the biggest bugaboo, why were the pipe trenches allowed to be uncovered with asphalt for three weekends in a row, maybe more, resulting in that horrendous condition of the road and why didn't the Clerk of the Works compel the contractor to cover these trenches as is required by the specifications?

       HALL: The only answer that I may have for that is on those dates, those particular three weekends, was it temperature or rain?

85) QUESTION: He was going 300 feet a day for five days, break for the weekend, uncovered trench.  I mean filled in with his muck and stuff but no asphalt.  That is how he did the entire project until you finally stopped him.  He never put asphalt on top of the trenches.

       HALL: I don't know.  I'll go back and check the records.  I don't know.  He may have been sensing a problem with that material that he was going to put his temporary patch on anticipating that if that patch started to break up, he wasn't going to get paid for that patch.  Typically we are pretty strict on the seven days.  We will let a trench sit for seven days, then we will make him put a patch on it.

86) QUESTION: The old drain pipe that is in there, are they properly sealed?  I'm worried about having an open trench where water can wash in and wash the roadway away of if some toxic material got in at one end and come flying up the other end.  When we broke all of these trenches for putting in laterals, have we properly sealed them so we won't have a long range problem of the road bed eroding away?

       HALL: We are keeping accurate measurements.  We're keeping accurate notes as far as which ends of the pipes have been sealed and which ends of the pipes have not been sealed.  And we will go back and seal those ones that have not been sealed.  So the answer is yes we are.  All the breaks and all the manholes have been documented.

87) QUESTION: Let me preface this one by saying that I don't have any problem with trucks and materials stored on Hoogendorn property and I don't have any problem with any kind of arrangement that Hoogendorn has made with the company for doing that.  I do have a concern if the Town got in the middle of negotiations and offered something, so my question is, is the Town in any way responsible for the storage of material on Hoogendorn nursery?

       HALL: My answer is no, we are not.  We have not had any negotiations with the Hoogendorns.  We have nothing to do with any compensation between Hoogendorn and Dicon or Dicon and Hoogendorn.  What I say is that the Town has no responsibility to restore or repair the damage that has been done over there.  That is my opinion.

88) QUESTION: One item in the contract was Loam & Seed and I know what that is for I think.  Where they tear up the side of the road on grass, they will replant it and repair it.  But that bid was for the entire section when we were going to remove the old drainage pipe which exists all along the football field.  We did not do that so the amount of grass and loam and seed and effort is minimal.  It is just whatever mess they made by the side of the road because they dug in the street.  They bid X amount of dollars for a lot of loam and seed which they are not going to use now.  What happens to that money?  Do they get paid for it or do we get that money back?

       HALL: They don't get paid for it.  The money doesn't pass any hands.  If they don't do a unit square yard, they don't get paid for that square yard.

89) QUESTION: There is a lot of damage done on the other side of the road too when they were dumping the dirt and picking it up and backfilling and stuff.  Is that going to be all reseeded at their cost or is that going to be added to their square footage?

       HALL: He's responsible for all the damage he has done.

       O'LOUGHLIN: We have been very critical.  The guys are out in the field on a daily basis checking these things out.  If they note something that needs to be reengineered, we keep track of it.  If he submits an application, we will have our records in place.  We will check our as-built information against his as-built information.

90) QUESTION: Does that include also the trees that got damaged.

       O'LOUGHLIN: We will look at any damage caused by him.  We are in daily contact with our tree warden.

91) QUESTION: Are we going to leave tees on these water lines to bring water lines across to the side streets so we don't have to dig back out again?

       HALL: There is one side street that we are going to do that for and that is Ward Street.  Ward Avenue is going to get a tee and we're going to run an 8 inch main right up Ward Avenue and tie into Columbia.

92) QUESTION: When we do projects like that when they brought the water in before to solve Billy Cristi's problem a couple years ago or whenever it was from Honeyman up Ward and down Columbia.  And now we are doing Turner Road and going into Ward to meet Columbia but we are leaving a fishhook so to speak on Ellen and Ward.  It fishhooks around the other side of Honeyman.  To me just in the future if we are going to do things like this, it just makes no sense why all these people have water and we leave out ten houses.  It makes no sense at all.

       O'LOUGHLIN: There was.  Just reading the papers, there was a lot of dispute, conversations back and forth on where you put those lines in.  So there was a lot of other pressures I guess in that decision.

       HALL: I think the Town made a good decision on going the way we went because instead of having ten services coming up one side, they went the other way and picked up 23 services.

93) QUESTION: I'm not questioning which way they went.  I'm interested in which way they didn't go.  It doesn't make any sense.

       HALL: There is tees left there.  The pipe is stubbed out ready to be picked up in the future.  There's valves there.  They are already to do it.  I think it's a matter of economics.

94) QUESTION: If somebody is connected into a line at Honeyman Avenue and the line goes down the rest of Columbia and the rest of Ward Avenue, will they be required to pay frontage, if they already have water from Honeyman?

       HALL: That's a question to refer to Finance and the Administrator.

       O'LOUGHLIN: That would have to be addressed by the Council and through Finance as far as any decisions.

95) QUESTION: This question has been asked and I have heard answers at various times but I'd like to try it one more time to try and get a handle on it in my own mind.  Why has the contractor been doing so little work in the last month and a half?

       HALL: Since December 13th he has been disallowed to do any additional work until he has repaired the road.

       QUESTION: And has he repaired the road?

       HALL: Yes, he has as of January 10th.

96) QUESTION: Actually the condition of the road on January 10th versus the condition of the road at Christmas is practically no difference.  I mean he had gotten the road to its current condition in a relatively reasonable time - a week or two.  He should have been able to do it in six days but in a week or two he had the road in a passable condition for all safety vehicles and my Mustang didn't bottom out.  The road was passable.  It is from that time like Christmas until now that I have seen him twiddling his thumbs and I guess I don't know why.

       O'LOUGHLIN: I think there was some patching problems.  He was trying to use different type of patch.  We were trying to make sure, instead of allowing him to use anything again, we wanted to make sure it was done correctly.

97) QUESTION: Let me give you an anecdotal story.  I'm walking down the road on one of these days with two men on the job in this period of time I'm talking about.  These two men were doing the following work: one was driving a machine with a large bucket that had asphalt in it, the other was walking alongside with a shovel and they were going up the street and they were filling in what amounted to a six inch wide, half inch deep crack in the road which they had previously fixed.  This is what I'm talking about them twiddling their thumbs.  They did this a number of days and this is during the time when the Town had them shut down, I think.  The Town didn't turn them on until January 10th, right or there about.  So in the middle of the Town saying that you are doing no more work, these guys are two men with one machine and a shovel are doing what my grandson and I could have done.  And as much needed, so I am going to pass on the question, I really never have gotten an answer to the question as to why they are twiddling their thumbs.