It was a night of public hearings for the Clear Lake City Council on March 4, as decisions were made for $1.6 million of debt issuance for capital projects. Dean Snyder Construction, of Clear Lake, was awarded the contract for both the Surf District Streetscape and the Municipal Bandshell Improvement Projects, and the Council approved taking the next step to enter into a future General Obligation Loan Agreement with the North Iowa Children’s Museum.
In the first order of business the Council approved entering into a general obligation corporate purpose loan agreement in an amount not to exceed $1,625,000. This loan agreement is associated with infrastructure development costs related to South Shore Estates housing projects, the future Emerald Edge apartments and townhome project, as well as the municipal bandshell restoration project.
This debt service, which will be part of the 2025 fiscal year budget, will equate to about a 20 cents per $1,000 increase in taxable valuation and will be amortized over a 10 year period.
“Even though it seems like once in a while we do issue some debt, this is a major business enterprise that we’re running here,” said City Administrator Scott Flory. He said that other cities aspire to be in the range of 70 percent of their constitutional debt capacity. “We’re at about 3 percent…by all measures that is no debt. So that’s very, very, very rare in the country to have an organization our size with that level of debt.”
Dean Snyder Construction was awarded the contract for the Surf District Streetscape Project, being the lowest bidder in the amount of $4,284,533.24. That was the base bid plus the acceptance of alternate number one, a deduction of $143,088 for using a limestone stepper in place of metal grates in the road right-of-way. Flory said they have been working with the project consultant and the contractor to identify areas where reductions can be made to bring the project cost a little closer to what the cost estimate of $3.8 million. There were two other bidders on this project, Wicks Construction, Decorah, came in at $4,316,962 and Henkel Construction, Mason City, was within a respectable margin of Wicks as well. “So this was definitely indicative of where the market was for that project,” Flory said.
Dean Snyder Construction was also awarded the contract for the Ludwig Wangberg Memorial Bandshell and Lakeview Room improvements. There were two bids and Dean Snyder was the lowest responsible bidder in the amount of $754,000 base bid. The other bid was from Henkel at $817,000. The city had budgeted $650,000 for this project, 14 percent below the accepted bid.
“So again, I think we’re right where the market value would indicate we probably ought to be for this. So we’re probably getting a good value here for the project,” Flory said. “It’s kind of a multi-phased project to lessen the impact on people that want to use the Lakeview Room. We’ll get started on that soon and take a little break and come back and finish up the bandshell portion after the summer busy season.”
Another public hearing was held and the Council approved entering into a future General Obligation Loan Agreement related to a potential financial contribution of $700,000 to the North Iowa Children’s Museum project. This is the maximum dollar amount that the City can issue for a general corporate purpose without being required to hold a public referendum Flory said. The Council did request that the Children’s Museum get a feasibility study done. The City of Clear Lake did sign a letter of intent with the nonprofit and contributed to the cost of the study. Flory said that they posted a request for proposals and have received three. A group composed of the Mayor and people representing the Museum will be scoring those proposals and conducting interviews before making a determination on which consultant to go with.
