By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
Brandon Twp.— During the Monday night meeting, the Brandon Township board of trustees voted 6-1 to approve the replacement of the roof on Fire Station Three, 5050 Oakwood Road. The station was built around 2003 and has not had a new roof since then.
“The roof at Station 3 is starting to deteriorate,” said Brandon Fire Chief Dave Kwapis. “We’re having sections of that roof fall off. There’s a striping on it, streaking on it, from the shingles actually failing. We obtained three different quotes on that. We had two that would do labor, two companies that would provide the materials, and one company that would only quote both together.”
The lowest bid for labor was from Wilton Building Company for $27,600, and the lowest bid for materials was from Gulf Eagle Supply for $12,891.08. That brings to total amount for the project to $40,491.08, which is budgeted for.
“They have to remove all of the shingles, so it is a remove and replace,” he said. “We’d been talking about it for a few years that we knew it was going to come to a point that we were going to have to replace that.”
Treasurer Scott Broughton was the only one to vote no on the motion. He explained that he had concerns about the company Wilton Building as Jason Wilton is the current director of planning and building and the building inspector.
“The optics of soliciting bids from other companies, and then going with our own person who comes in below that, I have a problem with the optics there,” said Broughton. “In my opinion, if we think that we want our employee to bid on a project, then I think that they need to be sealed bids.”
Kwapis assured that the company, not the employee himself, is doing the work and that the quote came in independently of the other quotes received.
The roof project will be the first for Station 3 which became operable March 1, 2005. The $1.2 million project started in December 2003, and was delayed to allow the architect to fix some paint problems and other small details.