RIVER VALE —The Township Council on July 24 rejected two bids for a long-planned public safety complex, the bids landing approximately $5 million over what was anticipated. Officials hope to go out for bid again this month or in September.
Gennaro Rotella, the township’s administrator and chief financial officer, said initial estimates for a new complex, which was approved nearly two years ago, were approximately $12.5 million for the building and $2.5 million in such soft costs as architectural design, engineering, and planning services.
However, the two bids recently received were from the Bennett Company Inc., at $15,580,000, and from the M&M Construction company at $16,050,000.
Rotella said he would likely propose an additional $6 million in bonding for the new complex, possibly at an August or early fall mayor and council meeting.
Rotella told Pascack Press that he would re-estimate the bond funding for the complex’ s costs in light of recent bids, and said leaps in construction and material costs, project delays, and overall inflation had driven costs up and required more funds to complete the project.
“We’ ll go out to rebid when we have more funding in place. And we’ ll do our best to make sure that everything is included that may have increased,” Rotella said.
He said the building’ s original cost estimate was from May 2021, noting “The costs of materials have in some cases gone up to 50% more” and that he would request cost updates from the architect, project estimator, and information technology consultant.
Based on the project’ s original estimate in October 2021, we reported the average township homeowner likely would see an approximate $185 annual property tax increase over 30 years due to the $13.3 million bonding necessary for a proposed one-story, 18,000-square-foot new Public Safety Complex planned for 3.25 acres at the corner of Rivervale Road and Prospect Avenue.
No new estimates for future tax impacts were available at press time.
In late July 2022, we reported the township hired a construction management services consultant to oversee the facility’ s construction, then anticipated to start in spring 2023.
The $378,000 contract to hire Epic Management Inc. of Piscataway included preconstruction services and a flat fee of $7,850 for construction management services, including an on-site trailer for $18,770 monthly. Construction was then estimated at 18–20 months.
We reached out to Mayor Mark Bromberg for comment for this story.