By Sam Parsons

The Ottumwa City Council met on Tuesday and discussed the bids they received for their proposed City Hall Improvements Project. The project was initially estimated to cost roughly $3.5 million, but the city received two bids for the project and both were over $4.5 million. Public Works Director Larry Seals said that he discussed with each bidder the reasons behind the size of the bids and attempted to add some value engineering, but said that the city would be unable to downscale the project enough to make the price fit. Both bids were rejected by the council at the recommendation of the Public Works Department.

It was a similar story for the city’s proposed Tennis Complex in Greater Ottumwa Park. The city received bids for Phase 1 of the project and Community Development Director Zach Simonson said that both were above the estimate given by the architect of the project. Simonson said that after conversations with the contractors, they had identified a total of 9 changes to be made to the plans that could reduce the cost and that a version of the plans updated with those changes would be presented to the council at a later date, but for now, the bids for the current version were rejected by the city.

The next Ottumwa City Council meeting will be held on March 21.