Clinton council will meet to award pool contracts
Contracts to build the new Clinton outdoor swimming pool and splash pad and to renovate the swim complex building in Jaycee Park are scheduled to be awarded by the City Council in a special meeting at 2 p.m. today (Nov. 8).
Clinton City Manager Roger Houck said the project was divided into those three elements, with each one receiving separate bids. The low bidder on each project is expected to get the contract for that portion.
The total of the three lowest bids was $1.637 million, which was over the $1.5 million budget the city approved for the project in fall 2021, Houck said.
Because the bids were over budget, the council during its Oct. 23 meeting deferred awarding contracts until the city could study the bids further and resolve the issue of the work coming in over budget.
There was supposed to be a special council meeting last Thursday (Nov. 2) to award the contracts, but Houck said he canceled that meeting and had it rescheduled for this week as he sought additional state grant funding for the project.
Clinton originally was awarded a $750,000 local parks and recreation grant in fall 2021 from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for the pool project, which the city had to match. That prompted the council to allocate $1.5 million.
After the bids came in over that amount, Houck said he applied to TDEC for additional money, and the city was approved for a total grant of $900,000.
“We applied on Tuesday (Oct. 31) and got approved within 48 hours,” he said. “Again, we must match that, so the other $900,000 will come from the city’s capital projects fund.”
The city has enough money in the capital budget so none of that has to be borrowed, he said.
As for the project going over budget, Houck said he was not surprised.
“That’s really not bad,” he said. “The way things are costing today, I really expected it, and it’s better than I thought it would come in. We were awarded this grant in fall 2021, so the [project] is about 3 years old.
“We originally bid it out as one project, but nobody bid on it,” Houck said. “Then we broke it into the three projects and got bids.”
He said he called for the special meeting now so the contracts could be awarded and work could begin before winter, with hopes that the new pool, splash pad and related structures could be ready to open by next summer.
“We didn’t want to have to wait until the Nov. 27 regular council meeting,” Houck said.
Clinton’s outdoor pool, in Jaycee Park off Nave Street, has been closed since the end of the 2019 season. It was not reopened for 2020 due to structural problems and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the city had chosen to keep it closed since then, pending renovations or construction of a new pool.
Houck said that after the pool closed on Labor Day 2019, maintenance found two leaks: one in the plumbing, last repaired in 1985; and another in the lining, last repaired in 2002. Together, they resulted in a loss of about 10,000 gallons of water a day.
Houck said usually when there is a leak, it’s either in the plumbing or the lining, not both. He said the city started noticing the loss halfway through summer 2019.
At the time, he said the city could apply for a grant to cover the estimated $342,875 repair bill for the leaks, but the city was also considering closing the pool permanently.
Since then, however, the plan was devised to build a new, smaller pool and add a splash pad at the Jaycee Park location, using the state grant money for part of the costs.
The city also has a splash pad at Lakefront Park, which is not affected by these projects.