Borough hires firm for Bogard project

PALMER — As the Mat-Su Borough moves ahead with its biggest road construction project ever, assemblymen are wringing their hands over costs.

“Half the funds are in design, right of way, inspection, project management,” Assemblyman Jim Covler said at the assembly’s Dec. 17 meeting. “I just think we’re spending too high a percentage of these precious appropriations.”

He was talking about the latest change order to the project. The borough asked the assembly to approve a $992,614 contract with DOWL HKM for “construction administrative services and additional design services.” Colver calculated that of a $12.98 million appropriation, the borough had spent $6.8 million thus far.

Essentially, DOWL will oversee the contractor hired to build the road. The project is a long-discussed effort to connect Bogard’s terminus at 49th State Street with Arctic Avenue, which ends at Palmer High School. When it’s complete it will mean a straight shot from Butte all the way to Meadow Lakes.

Mike Brown, with the borough’s public works department, said that the contract amount was large but it would pay for three, full-time employees to oversee the project. Typically the borough has just one person assigned to oversight of a project. The state’s Department of Transportation, meanwhile, usually assigns five.

The figure of three people, he said, was a middle ground.

“This is not your standard borough project. This project is going to look a little bit more like a DOT project than a borough project, just because of the size and the complexity,” Brown said.

Indeed, Brown said, it would be the largest road project the borough has ever undertaken.

“We want to try to conserve project funds as much as we can but at the same time we don’t want to cut ourselves short,” he said.

Also having trouble with the price were assemblymen Ron Arvin, Steve Colligan and Jim Sykes. Colligan and Sykes, though, ended up voting for it.

“Since this is a large project, as you said, I think it makes sense for this to go forward even though it seems a little hard to swallow,” Sykes said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.