New Perrysburg Twp. administration building still going through bid process

Construction on a new Perrysburg Township administration building won’t begin until next year, officials said.

Awarding the building bid had initially been on the agenda for last week’s meeting. The trustees, however, took no action on the measure.

After the meeting, township Administrator Jon Eckel said the township engineer is reviewing the bids.

“When we read the proposals, all the firms can’t start until spring,” Mr. Eckel said. “So there wasn’t any hurry any longer.”

A recommendation should be available for the trustees at their Oct. 2 meeting, he said.

In July, the trustees voted to rebid the $3.7 million project after an attorney for one of the companies that was not awarded the contract complained about the process. The bid had been awarded June 5 to Rudolph Libbe Inc. of Walbridge, Ohio.

After consulting with attorneys, Mr. Eckel recommended redrafting the proposal.

In a June 11 letter, an attorney with Bricker Graydon LLP, of Columbus, said the township's procurement process was defective for three reasons, and the contract should be awarded to Miller Diversified Construction Co. The request for proposals, the attorney said, did not comply with the Ohio Revised Code or the Ohio Administrative Code; Rudolph Libbe's proposal was non-responsive, meaning it didn’t meet the request for proposal requirements; and the process gave Rudolph Libbe an unfair competitive advantage over the other proposers.

Comte Construction Co. of Toledo had also submitted a bid to construct the new township building.

Engineering firms Proudfoot Associates, DGL Consulting Engineers, and Tetra Tech reviewed the initial bids, along with Mr. Eckel and the township’s building/maintenance professional. The vote was 4-1 to award the contract to Rudolph Libbe. DGL voted for Miller Diversified.

Mr. Eckel had asked for a vote to hire Rudolph Libbe at the trustees’ May 15 meeting. Trustees Bob Mack and Gary Britten said they needed time to read through the proposal, which they said they had received the day before.

Mr. Mack and Mr. Britten approved awarding the bid to Rudolph Libbe on June 5. Trustee Joe Schaller abstained because his brother works for the construction company.

The new, 10,000-square-foot administration building will be on the south end of the Lime City Road campus, which also includes police and fire facilities. The township’s communications center for emergency services, which is now in the police department’s space, will be relocated there.

The existing administration building, which is 16,000 square feet, will be kept and used for storage.

Trustees have designated $1.2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds toward the building project.

In a follow-up interview, Mr. Britten said an independent committee is again looking at the re-bids.

“We want to make sure we make the right decision,” he said. “There’s definitely been some hiccups.”

They might have made a mistake during the first bidding process, he said, “and we got called on out on it. We called everything back, which is only right.”

The trustees and administration have not done a design-build process before, and are working their way through it, Mr. Britten said.

The new building is needed mostly to house the township emergency dispatch services, which is gravely in need of improvements, he said.