By Juliana A. Torres
Staff Writer

Plans for the expansion of New Nolte Road progressed Thursday night with the minimum number of votes from St. Cloud City Council members required to approve various elements of the project, from eminent domain settlements to engineering firm negotiations.

Three votes in favor, one vote against and one vote abstaining has become characteristic of the entire process for New Nolte Road, which the city plans to extend from where it deadends at Canoe Creek Road to Hickory Tree Road. Councilman Jarom Fertic’s family is directly affected in the city acquisition of property needed for the road, causing him to withdraw from voting and even participating in much of the discussions on the project because of the conflict of interest. Councilman Jay Polachek has been against the project since the county said it wouldn’t take the lead on the project, leaving the city to handle it on its own.

“To this moment, I still don’t believe we should be paying for a county road. I don’t think now is the time to be building this road,” he told the News-Gazette Friday.

The other three council members argue that the road expansion is necessary to create an east-west route alternate to 13th Street, St. Cloud’s portion of U.S. Highway 192.

On Thursday, and with the typical alignment of votes, the City Council authorized the staff to negotiate a Professional Engineering Services contract for with recommended engineering firms. The new engineers would replace Stantec Consulting Services, which has brought the designs for the road construction to 95 percent completion. The changeover would occur in conjunction with the city’s selection of a construction manager at risk, or CM, which the council recently chose as the method for overseeing the project and is currently out to bid.

“Because we’re doing the CM process, we are going in and evaluating just from an overall perspective on the plans as well as a value engineering approach to see if there are any more cost effective ways to build certain components,” Public Services Administrator Todd Swingle said.

Polachek asked about issues that are said to be in the plans up to this point.

“I have received the indication that there are issues, from various engineers and contractors,” Swingle said. “How severe are they? I don’t know. I know some of the ones that are specific, what I would call true errors, I think are pretty minor. There’s other things that would relate to cost.”

Swingle said the city would be looking into issues related with retention pond depths, South Florida Water Management District requirements and excess dirt. If any confirmed errors cost the city extra money in redesign, the city would be looking for a refund on services paid to the previous engineer, he added.

Polachek said he had concerns with the timing of selecting the engineers needed for the project.

“Bidding out a project to a construction manager on plans that aren't finalized, I'm questioning if we're going to get the best value,” he said.

Swingle reminded the council during the meeting of the reasoning behind going with a construction manager at risk, a relatively new method of handling construction projects compared to the old method of the city bidding out each component of the project separately.

“One of the primary motivators for doing the CM at this phase is some of the flexibility we have in being able to avoid changeovers by addressing items in the process as well as the increased flexibility we gain regarding participation on local contractors,” he said.

Polachek also updated the council on a recent “spirited” meeting he and city representatives had with the city's utility provider, OUC. The utility representatives admitted that nothing form St. Cloud's monthly meetings gets reported back to the OUC board, nor are they given minutes to review, Polachek said. The issue came up when the city asked for representation on the OUC board. The OUC staff promised to start reporting St. Cloud's concerns to the board.

The final action Thursday night was to approve a resolution banning city employees from using text messaging while conducting city business, as a way to avoid complicated methods of retaining the messages for Freedom of Information Act requests. The resolution also applies to elected and appointed officials in regards to quasi-judicial hearings in which they participate.