County updated on jail progress
By Rae KrugerMARSHALL - Once the door frames come, the walls for the Lyon County jail addition should start to go up, said Jason Splett of Contegrity, the county's construction manager on the project.
Splett told the county board at Tuesday's meeting the door frames are scheduled to arrive Monday.
"Once the door frames are here, you will start seeing some walls go up," Splett said.
The door frames need to be installed before walls can be constructed, Splett said.
The precast concrete portion of the jail addition should arrive Sept. 22, Splett said. That's a delay of about a week, but the timing is actually better, Splett said.
Wells Concrete, the manufacturer of pre-cast concrete walls and other items, said the Sept. 22 date means the pre-cast work will catch up with erection work.
"We won't have any hold-ups with erection," Splett said.
Splett also discussed a change order with the county board.
The state Department of Corrections said while the existing jail will only be used temporarily during the construction of the addition, the county must still install a second skylight and remove bricks on the existing jail windows until the existing jail is no longer needed, Splett said.
"The DOC needs natural daylight to all cells," Splett said.
"If we don't do it, we lose 17 prisoners at $55 a day," county administrator Loren Stomberg said.
The county would need to house prisoners outside the county if it does not allow the natural light during construction.
The DOC had already reviewed a design plan which did not have the natural light in one section of the existing jail during construction.
"This is temporary," Splett said of the brick removal in the existing jail. "But we will leave the second skylight."
In another construction update, Andy Frey of R.W. Beck said construction on the new waste cell at the landfill was going well.
"The liner crew was out there lining the cell and it's 65 to 70 percent done," Frey said. "If it hadn't rained that would have been done today. It should be finished tomorrow or Thursday."
"The project is still well ahead of schedule, but if we keep getting rain like this, it's going to hurt us because it dries so slow," Frey said.
In a second landfill issue, the board accepted a low quote of about $55,000 from Rogge Excavating to delivery daily cover from the demolition landfill to the sanitary landfill.
County director of public works Suhail Kanwar said the county highway department could do the work for about $59,000 if it included the wage needed to do the job. If the county reduced the wage additive it could do the job for about $52,900.
County board chairman Mark Goodenow said he'd want the wage additive included because it would accurately reflect the cost of the work. That would make the county quote higher than Rogge's quote, commissioners said.
The landfill is a separate entity with its own account and the county should not subsidize the work, Goodenow said.
"It is something to take a look at next year," commissioner Rodney Stensrud said of the county's highway department doing the cover work.
Commissioner Phil Nelson agreed: "Next time, we could allow the county to bid," Nelson said.
In other business:
The board set two hearings on two Minnesota Department of Transportation proposed alterations to Lyon County Ditch 69. The hearings will be held during a regular board meeting on Oct. 7.
The board heard a presentation from Mark Vaillancourt of the Southwest Initiative Foundation.
