Houghton will award a 1.1 million dollar paving project to Bacco Construction. Last night the city council approved Bacco’s lone bid for the project. The company’s bid came in a little higher than anticipated. Houghton will need to scale down the initial scope of the project so work can start.
There are only two companies that do paving in the UP and we had a bid from one of them. The total amount of the bid was $1,484,921, which looking at the individual unit pricing was not terrible, but it did exceed the amount of money that we had put aside for it. We did the base scope of work. We did have some additive alternates in there. That we can take those out as a lump to get it within the money that we had allocated. – Eric Waara, city manager, city of Houghton
Houghton practices making projects larger than necessary, by seperating segments of a project into multiple phases, in case a bid exceeds a project’s scope. The practice has allowed the city to complete large road projects and maintain a sense of continuity within the city limits. Houghton will remove additive alternative B to fit the project within the 1.4-million-dollar budget. As work moves forward, the city will monitor the project’s progress closely. And later determine if the city can add on the additional phases.
But what we want to do is get the project awarded, see how things are progressing, and then figure out where we’re going to put that paint line for them to stop. As we go eastbound on Sharon, from Portage toward Birch. We’ve already discussed this strategy with the contractor, and they’re fine with it. As long as they’re working there, we just tell them where to stop, so to speak. Because we certainly want to get that stretch paved to the joint that we paved up to in 2017. We want to see how things shake out in the field. – Eric Waara, city manager, city of Houghton
Houghton plans to apply for funding with MEDC to support a water system project. In 2024, the city was awarded a sewer project grant by EGLE. The city held off on the sewer project to give officials time to find water project funding. Houghton attempts to have water and sewer system projects occur concurrently, so residents feel less impacted by construction. Digging once is better than digging twice.
Additional action by the city council approved the 2025–26 budget. Departments and city funds will work with a little more than 13 million to operate city services, projects, and programs. Close to 4 million dollars of the city’s budget supports employee payroll and benefits.
proposing a 2025-2026 budget for the City of Houghton based on the same 15 mills that we charge right now. It’s a gross budget of $17,295,607, but if you take out the equipment fund and employee benefit fund, which are inter-fund transfers, it’s a budget of $13,781,107. And that difference is about 3.5 million in employee benefit and equipment that the other funds pay for. – Eric Waara, city manager, city of Houghton
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