Kagen calls foul over Green Bay causeway project (UPDATE)

By Marie Rohde

Renard Island Temporary Causeway, Final Cover and Grading on Existing Green Bay Lake Bed, Green Bay, Brown County

U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen is peppering President Barack Obama, the secretary of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with letters calling for the reversal of a Green Bay project bid award.

In his Oct. 15 letter to Obama, Kagen, D-Appleton, asked the president to halt construction of a temporary road leading to Renard Island because the awarded contract would cost taxpayers three times as much as the low bid for the job.

“This cannot be allowed to stand,” according to Kagen’s letter to Obama. Kagen was not immediately available for further comment.

READ KAGEN’S LETTERS

Since 1977, the Army Corps has used Renard Island as a disposal site for contaminated sediment dredged from local rivers. The corps plans to cap the landfill and give the 55-acre property to Brown County or the city of Green Bay for recreational uses. The temporary road would be used by trucks to transport concrete to cap the landfill.

But despite Kagen’s intervention, the Green Bay contractor who submitted the low bid and lost the contract said he is not optimistic.

“I sent a letter contesting the award but was told that all the proper procedures were followed,” said Greg Joski, president of PTS Contractors Inc., Green Bay. “I think it would be great if something happens, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

PTS and Advance Construction Inc., Green Bay, bid on the Army Corps project. PTS bid $684,000 to complete the 850-foot road, while Advance bid $761,000. The corps rejected the bids and negotiated a contract with Nuvo Construction Inc., Milwaukee.

Richard Wanta, executive director of the Wisconsin Underground Contractors Association, of which PTS and Advance are members, said he supports Kagen for confronting the Army Corps but doubts anything will change.

“I have no confidence that it will stop because of the bureaucracy and that it has to move forward because it’s already October,” Wanta said. “If they stop it now, it won’t be ready to get going for three or four months. That’s the dead of winter, and they won’t start a project then.”

Green Bay Mayor James Schmitt said he had also written to Obama and other political leaders but is convinced that the project will proceed.

“I talked with the Army Corps today and they are sticking to their guns,” Schmitt said Monday. “They do not see anything wrong with the process. I was told that the project would start either later this week or next.”

Schmitt said he hoped he would be able to convince Nuvo, a company with fewer than 10 employees, to hire one of the two Green Bay firms as subcontractors on the project but is not optimistic that would happen.

Earlier, corps spokeswoman Lynn Duerod said the low bids were rejected because the contract had been set aside for contractors in HUBZones, which the federal government identifies as areas where disadvantaged businesses are based. She said Nuvo is in a Milwaukee HUBZone but the corps negotiated the contract with Nuvo because it is considered an 8(a) contractor, one that is economically disadvantaged.

The request for bids did not call for 8(a) contractors.

The two low bidders would have been rejected even if they met the disadvantaged-business requirements because the corps estimated the project would cost $2.5 million, and any bid more than 25 percent below the estimate is automatically rejected, Duerod said earlier.

Kagen also sent an Oct. 12 protest letter to John McHugh, secretary of the Army, and an Oct. 8 letter to the inspector general of the Army Corps.

“While I support the Renard Island Temporary Causeway project, I am strongly opposed to both the decision made by the ACE to award the work to a business entity 100 miles away from the project at a price taxpayers and I find unacceptably high,” according to Kagen’s letter to McHugh.

According to Kagen’s letter to the corps, the price discrepancies alone warrant a re-examination of the project.

“I am deeply concerned with the perception that this contract price was set artificially high — without competitive bids,” according to the letter, “and that taxpayers are not getting a good deal.”