(Spirit Lake)– Completion of the Dickinson County Nature Center has hit a financial snag.
Representatives of the Dickinson County Conservation Board informed the board of supervisors of the matter at their meeting Tuesday.
John Walters of the Conservation Board told the supervisors they’ve learned the project is going to fall about 311-thousand dollars short after getting a bid to finish interior work on the facility.
The low bid of $817,800 was submitted by Eckhart Construction. Walters says the board stopped short of awarding the bid after learning of the budget shortfall. He told the supervisors the contractor has agreed to honor the bid 30 days while a decision is made on how to come up with the money. As of Tuesday they had 20 days left.
The news didn’t sit well with Supervisor Mardi Allen who blamed the higher cost on what she says were delays by architects on the project. Walters pinned some of the blame for the delays on the supervisors, saying they wanted detailed cost estimates prior to obtaining bids. Allen countered the project budget was based on the architect’s estimate, which was fairly close to the actual bids that were received. She and other supervisors blamed the Conservation Board for not adquately budgeting for the project.
Walters requested the Conservation Board be able to earmark proceeds from the county’s share of REAP grants to go toward the nature center along with some money in a land aquisition account, or that the supervisors budget the remaining amount that’s needed over the next five years or so. Neither of those options sat well with supervisors, with Allen saying “this is kind of like a slap in our face”.
Fellow supervisor Pam Jordan expressed her frustration that they (supervisors) haven’t been presented with a business plan for the facility. A conservation board member showed a copy of such a plan, dated 2005, to KUOO news this (Thursday) morning.
Jordan added the county is already footing a major part of expenses for the facility, such as salaries, utilities, insurance and so on.
