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Work moves forward at old bus garage

Hortonville School Board approves $102,587 bid for excavation

By Scott Bellile


The Hortonville School Board unanimously approved a $102,587 bid from Appleton-based paving contractor MCC to remove asphalt from the site of Hortonville High School’s former bus garage.

Steve Romatz of Blue Design Group told the board at its June 8 meeting that the bid is currently high and is expected to drop as much as $20,000, based on what work ultimately does not need to be done at the site.

The district recently built a transportation facility on County Road JJ to store the district’s school buses.

The new facility gives bus drivers a safer location to store their buses at night and allows mechanics more space to work on the vehicles. The former facility next to the high school auditorium on Towne Drive also proved a safety risk to passengers as drivers had to back into traffic blindly.

The plan is to convert the former transportation facility site into parking. Romatz said the new plan allows for 125 parking stalls versus a previous estimate of 65.

Romatz said he received two bids on the project, MCC’s $102,587 bid plus a $126,650 bid from Northeast Asphalt. He initially had hoped for bids in the range of $85,000 to $87,000.

“At first glance it really threw me for a loop and I was really disappointed,” Romatz said. “But after I started digging into it, I kind of learned that these guys really cover themselves and the school district at the same time.”

Romatz said MCC’s bid covers every possible cost and will decrease as the district learns how much stone needs to be brought to the site or hauled away.

For every truckload of material that does not need to be brought to the site or hauled away, Romatz estimated a savings of $23 per hour.

The $102,587 as it stands is in excess of the approximately $100,000 the district has to put toward the project, Romatz said. There is $84,000 budgeted toward the excavation and another $16,000 left over in the district’s contingency allowance from previous high school work.

In other transportation news, the board approved 5-0 the Transportation Department purchase of two vans. Board member Dana Ramshak abstained from voting.

The Ford Transit and the Dodge Caravan will transport students involved in work study and special education plus serve other school functions.

The two vehicles being replaced had 150,000 and 195,000 miles on their odometers, and their underbodies were rusting out.

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