SOUTH RIVER–The Borough Council approved a resolution rejecting all bids received for the Main Street Downtown Streetscape project improvements.
On Sept. 5, two bids were received for the project, according to the council agenda.
The apparent low bid was submitted by Seacoast Construction Inc. of East Brunswick with a base bid of $538,675. The second low bid was submitted by S. Batata Construction Inc. of Parlin with a base bid of $555,140, according to the agenda.
The council decided to reject the bids as they both exceed the allowable funding, according to the agenda.
“Although the borough has $180,000 in local grant funding from Comcast, the borough’s total budget for the Main Street Downtown Streetscape project will be determined by available funding from bond funds or other sources of revenue, etc.,” Borough Administrator Jack Layne said.
On Sept. 24, the council approved the resolution rejecting the bids.
“Basically, the borough attempted a number of different ways to bid out this project. All of them, however, came back with prices that we felt were too high. As we are using grant monies to pay for this project, we were limited in the price we were willing to pay,” Layne said. “The borough was advised that bidding out the project at this time, the end of the construction season, was working to the detriment of our goals. Construction companies are already in progress with projects and few were willing to bid.”
Layne said the borough decided to reschedule the project for early 2019. It was felt that more companies would provide bids at that time and prices would be much lower, he said.
Once a bid submittal date has been established, the bidders will have approximately two to three weeks to submit their bids to the borough, according to Layne.
Layne said the scope of the project that will be bid on will be determined by the council after the borough’s engineering firm and staff have submitted their project design and scope recommendations.
For more information, visit www.southrivernj.org/agendas/council/.
Contact Vashti Harris at vharris@newspapermediagroup.com.
