City Council - Special Meeting

It's now 530 p.m. We're going to call a special meeting of September 7th, 2026 to order. Mr. Sherman, please call the roll.

Mr. Severns. Here. Mr. Jacklin. Here. Mr. Ruckman. Here. Ms. Keener. Here. Mr. Mahan. Present. Mrs. Hager. Here. Mr. Miller. Here.

We are in session. We have two resolutions for this evening. The first one was resolution number 2026-89. Mr. Sherman?

A resolution authorizing the safety service director to apply for, accept, and enter into a water pollution control loan fund whip cliff agreement on behalf of the City of Mount Vernon for planning, design, and or construction of wastewater facilities, designating a dedicated repayment source for the loan, and declaring an emergency.

Mr. Ruckman.

Yes, thank you, Mr. President. I move to suspend the rules requiring three separate readings and ask that we take resolution number 2026-89 to its third and final reading.

Second. And move to second for the suspension of the rules and a discussion on the suspension. Mr. Sherman.

Mr. Severance. Yes. Mr. Jacklin. Yes. Mr. Ruckman. Yes. Ms. Keener. Yes. Mr. Mahan. Yes. Mrs. Hager. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes.

Rules suspended, Mr. Ruckman.

Yes, thank you. I move to adopt resolution number 2026-89.

Second. I move and second for the adoption of this resolution. Any discussion? Mr. Ruckman?

Thank you, Mr. President. This is something I know some of us on council have gone through and discussed before. Some of us are new to this. It's all very riveting stuff. I know Mr. Salyers has some things that he'd like to go over with us on this. Like I said, I know it's something that we have discussed before. And it's actually quite been a quite a beneficial program for municipalities to get into set up by the federal government through the EPA So mr. Sawyers Thank You mr. Ruckman again.

This is the water pollution control loan fund. This is an EPA Loan that is specifically designed for wastewater projects We have utilized this already We authorized it last year so we could get the design loan rolling for our wastewater plant. Just a reminder that the plant is at the end of its life, its functional life, and we do have an EPA mandate in addition to the end of life for a lot of the functionality out there. We do have an EPA mandate to reduce our phosphorus output into the Cocosin River. So there are a handful of things that are driving this project, but Coming back to it. This is the financing model whereas with the police station with the court We're using bonds. This is the financing model for the wastewater project as mr. Ruckman indicated It's a very low interest rate loan we've internally done the modeling for what we are Able and willing to afford by authorizing this as we've already done for the design loan. We're reauthorizing this basically, as I've said before, this is essentially like getting a preapproval letter if you wanted to make it like tabletop economics here. Um, you gotta have that pre-approval letter before you go out and get your mortgage. We need this authorization, uh, before we, uh, go back and, uh, get the actual loan. Uh, and you are not committing this city right now by passing this legislation, you're not committing the city to any more money. because the delivery model that we have chosen for construction for the wastewater project is a CMAR, so you will see GMPs, and probably two we communicated with Cozing Industrial, that's the CM. So they anticipate one, maybe two GMPs. So when you see those GMPs, that's when you are considering the cost of the project. So just the authorization here, gets us in the hopper, if you will, for this project. But there is a deadline on that. We had hoped to maybe have, the GMP or other documents ready before this deadline, but I don't know that we will have that for you to consider simultaneously. So we wanted to make sure that we had this out of the way before we missed the opportunity to do that and had to push it into 28, or sorry, 27. I'll go ahead and skip a year for you. But any questions?

Any other discussion? I think we've talked this through and through. Mr. Sherman.

Mr. Severance. Yes. Mr. Jacklin. Yes. Mr. Ruckman. Yes. Ms. Keener. Yes. Mr. Mahan. Yes. Mrs. Hager. Yes. Mr. Miller.

Yes. Resolution is adopted. The final resolution for this evening is resolution number 2026, stage 92. Mr. Sherman.

A resolution authorizing the safety service director to accept guaranteed maximum price, GMP, package number two for certain components of the Mount Vernon Police Station project as set forth in exhibit A pursuant to the city's agreement with the construction manager at risk and declaring an emergency.

Mr. Mahan.

Thank you, sir. Council, first, I want to thank you for being here. Then we need to move to... amend 2026-92 by putting the amount in section one. The amount is $20,430,427 and that is in, I believe all of you have a handout in front of you. I move to amend 2026-92 with that amount. Second.

I move and second to amend this resolution and a discussion on the amendment. Mr. Sherman.

Mr. Severance. Yes. Mr. Jacklin. Yes. Mr. Ruckman. Yes. Ms. Keener. Yes. Mr. Mahan. Yes. Mrs. Hager. Yes. Mr. Miller. Yes.

The resolution is amended. Mr. Mahan.

Thank you. I now move to suspend the rule requiring three separate readings. Take resolution 2026-92 to its third and final reading.

Second.

I move to second for the suspension of the rules. Any discussion on the suspension? Mr. Sherman.

Mr. Severance? Yes. Mr. Jacklin? Yes. Mr. Ruckman? Yes. Ms. Keener? Yes. Mr. Mahan? Yes. Mrs. Hager? Yes. Mr. Miller?

Yes. The rule is suspended, Mr. Mahan.

I now move to adopt Resolution 2026-92. Second.

The move to second to adopt this resolution. Any discussion? Mr. Mahan? I believe we're going to have some discussion.

Ma'am, if you'd please come and... for the public, remind us who you are and walk us through this and let us know. I think we have a couple questions that we talked about before, but council may have some questions.

Okay. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here. As before, I'm still Cigarette Parks, Senior Vice President with Pizzuti Solutions, and we are your owner's rep for the Mount Vernon Police Station. As was mentioned, GMP2 represents the balance of the contracted work for the new Mount Vernon Police Station on Siker Road. It picks up where GMP1 left off. If you recall, GMP1 addressed some early procurement items, some early site environmental requirements, basically the things that were necessary to get the project started and get ahead of items that had an unusually long lead time so that we had them when we needed them in keeping with our construction schedule. GMP2 is the rest of your project. Everything from your site work, through your building pad, through your vertical construction, all the way through your closeout commissioning and turning the building over to Mount Vernon and the police department. Since this is a CM at Risk project, it is the sum total of your project all in, notwithstanding any material changes that would be the result of owner-driven enhancements to the project where the funds included in GMP1 cannot be responsive to those, and then that would be additional discussion about how to include those in in the project but for the project that we know now what is designed and what has been accepted by the the team the owner the owner's rep the design team and the police department this is your project yeah ma'am thank you we've had roughly a two and a half percent

increase from the $26 million number. You had a very good explanation for us. Could you please explain to us what happened with the soil compaction and the septic tanks, please, and why it's so critical to get that right?

Absolutely. So on this site, actually in this geographic area of Ohio and the Midwest where we live, it's very typical to encounter what we refer to as unsuitable soils. And those can be anything from sand to silt to clay to a combination thereof. incompetent stone, sandstone or limestone that it's not possible to build on. And then things need to be done to that soil in order to make it suitable for us to build on. We have to be able to reach a compaction level that can withstand the weight of the building, putting it in its most basic terms. When this site was originally identified, there was some preliminary borings that were done by Terracon, who is under contract with Mount Vernon as the project's geotechnical engineer. Those borings made reference to the possibility of some uncompacted soils, but they did not necessarily speak to the ability to compact them, which I understand is a very subtle nuance, but it matters for the sake of this conversation. Once our CM team and our site contractor, who is stout excavating, actually got into the soil, we realized that not only was it unsuitable, but there was never going to be a way that we could compact the soil to achieve the compressive strength necessary to hold up the building. The team conferred for a solid two weeks on the best way to address the condition. We evaluated various percentages for lime stabilization, cement stabilization, and even what we referred to as our nuclear option of literally trucking the soil off the site and replacing it with suitable soils. That last one just didn't pencil out. There was no way we were ever going to be able to do that and stay within budget. The most logical modification method and the one that was most cost effective that would allow us to stay on schedule was to defer to a four percent cement stabilization which the project has elected to do that will address the unsuitable soils once and for all it helps us manage like it's an extra two weeks or so that we picked up on the schedule and then continue on with our construction that will allow us to compact the dirt start our slab for our building and then continue with our vertical construction. As I was explaining to Mr. Mahan earlier, there are handoffs before we can start our vertical construction. The site contractor has to compact the soil, which needs to be accepted then by the slab contractor. and then he'll build on top of it. And then the vertical constructor will need to accept the concrete slab. If we can't pass through those first two gates successfully, we have no project. So the cost of doing that and managing the impact to our schedule was the $615,181. If we hadn't done that and instead deferred to something like hedging our bets on lime stabilization or trying to find enough soil to replace the unsuitable soils on site, we would have essentially invalidated the bids that we have that are behind the numbers with GMP2. and all the wheels would have fallen off our project. We would have needed to take all the bid packages back out to the market, and there's really no telling what the pricing would have come back in as and whether or not we would have met the numbers that we previously achieved on the first bid set or come in over and then had to start a new value management exercise, which no one was really interested in. This building is a very efficient design. It is not over designed. It is not under designed. It has everything that the police chief was requesting, and the design is responsive to the needs of this growing community for several decades. So the decision to activate the 4% cement stabilization was done quite intentionally, and I believe that the project team made a very good decision in real time.

Thank you. Could you explain to us how this number on GMP2, the 20.4, insulates us from perhaps another, a little bit of the unknown? How much protection do we have with this number?

As we discussed at the last meeting, that is the primary benefit of the CM at risk delivery model. the CM is telling you that this is the cost of your project and anything outside of that that again is not a material change to the project or like a force majeure act of God that would extend the schedule there is no additional cost that is on paper the construction manager saying based on the design and what has been accepted by the project owner the amount that's in the GMP is the cost of your project period there are aspects to this project that provide an additional layer of insulation for example this project contractually has a 2% contingency. So within the GMP already lives $373,000 of contingency dollars, which can be used to address things like unforeseen conditions, if there's a subcontractor whose labor force cannot maintain the schedule. The CM has the ability to supplement that workforce to maintain the schedule. That allows us to manage the cost of additional general conditions and schedule extensions. So there is a bumper rail already in place to the tune of $373,000 that lives within this contract. Additionally, we have some allowance dollars, which represents the high end not to exceed for certain scope items that we don't have exact pricing for because the pricing now, it's like too soon. We need to wait until we're a little bit closer to actually executing that work in order to refine that pricing. We have allowance money for, I think it's five scope items that represent the not to exceed cost of those Five areas which also means that that allowance could be more than we need and the cost will actually come in lower so we do have some some provisions within the GMP that Contribute to the success of the project not costing any more than the total GMP Thank You ma'am excellent council additional questions I

What would have happened if we had ignored the soil problem?

The reality is I don't think we could have. The recommendation to modify the soil came directly from the project's geotechnical engineer, which is Terracon. And so the project team doesn't really have the option to ignore that. but in the event that they would choose to move forward with construction, several things could have happened. One, and most importantly, is all that risk would have shifted away from the construction manager and onto Mount Vernon as the project owner because you would, the universal you, would have overridden the professional recommendation of the geotechnical engineer that you have under contract. The other scenario is, The CM CK construction could have chosen to say we're not taking on that risk we we terminate our contract with GMP one go find another CM or Your trade subcontractors primarily stout engineering as your site excavation Contractor could have said we also are unwilling to take on that risk find yourself another site guy so in any of those scenarios OUR PROJECT WOULD HAVE BECOME A NON-PROJECT AND THE RISK WOULD HAVE SHIFTED BACK OVER TO MOUNT VERNON.

THANK YOU.

COUNCIL, I WANT TO ADD A COUPLE THINGS, TOO. FAVORITE SAYING OF MINE, YOU CAN BE A LOT OF THINGS BUT SURPRISED ISN'T ONE OF THEM. This calendar year, in two of our projects, we've had this same situation happen. Our salt barn facility, we went several, probably about a dozen feet down, if I were guessing, and we ran into poor soil situations And we had to remediate that with, of all things, lime over where we had to remove a lot of lime. And we offered to bring our own lime in over, of course, and I can't utilize that lime in the same situation. Um, uh, I, and lest anybody think that we could have avoided this, if we would have built next to the, um, uh, the Knox County jail, uh, if you remember the Knox cattle dam, um, we had to do soil swaps there as well. Um, we used topsoil in that regard and put into the Knox, uh, cattle dam. But, um, this is something that, uh, Is pretty common I think in in construction and you've got to get that that compaction just right because if you build a building I think pretty much anybody can tell you if you build a building on a poor Foundation you're gonna end up with problems down the road. That's why we're leaving five North Gay so It was good that we caught this now. Of course, we would like to be seeing, if you have to have overruns, you'd like to see those later in the project, but hey, we'd like to see them not at all. But we're glad that we found this now and we've been able to absorb this into the project.

Agreed. This is very common. It's actually less common to not have it given where we live.

Other questions?

This is still 2.5 million under what you brought to us, correct?

Mr. Brinkman, that's correct. We approved a $29 million, but we're still well within that. I mean, no one had hoped for that number. We had hoped for a lower number. But we still have some room.

That was the borrow up to number. And then we landed in, I think, 26.9-ish. Yeah.

So we had set an internal target of 26 million. At one point the project was at 29 million and we value engineered. It's a fun term that we've learned in here. But basically we strip things that at one point the project had skylights in it, at one point it had more, how would you say,

Had different entry features. It had a different street-facing appearance. There was a different level of fenestration for the windows, some of the detailing. So the frills.

Frills, yeah. Lest anybody in the community hear this and think that this is just a Taj Mahal type. No, we took a lot of those frills out to try to hit that budget. And we would have been under that budget. But you've got to get the foundation right.

and construction knows that you're gonna find things that you need to deal with. And this is one of those things that we need to deal with sooner rather than later.

Mr. Miller, do you have a question?

Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate what I think has already been said. Anybody that's walked inside of 5 North Gay Street can understand the importance of a very solid foundation. I'm scared to go on the third floor myself. But I just want to clarify one point. I believe it's been clarified, but I just want to further clarify this. By doing this, we are shifting any liability that we would have by going ahead with our original plan. That if something would go wrong with this foundation after we adopt this, that that liability would fall back upon the builder.

It does. It does for a couple reasons. One, the contractors, the trade subcontractors on this project, in addition to your CM, are obligated to provide a warranty at the end of the project. Additionally, this project has in it an 11-month warranty walkthrough. So at 11 months, one month prior to the end of the contract, traditional warranty period, the project team, the owner, the owner's rep, the CM, the design team, and the tenant agency will walk the building and identify any deficiencies. Some of the things that you would see from a failing foundation system would be things like cracks, doors that don't close, windows that don't close, a tilting feeling to the building. The goal of the 11-month walkthrough is to identify those before the end of the warranty period so they can be corrected before it becomes an issue for the building owner and occupant. So we already have that in the contract.

I can understand and appreciate that. My only concern is that 11 months isn't very much time for a foundation issue to show up. I mean, something shows up 10 or 15 years from now, and I'm not trying to play the devil's advocate here. I just want to be... overly ensured that you know since we know we have this problem and we're taking steps to remedy it right is there anything anything further that we could do or should do to make sure that these modifications are going to be more than more than enough to address the issue at hand no the it's a good question no the solution that we selected the four percent cement stabilization

represents the best option available to modify the soil conditions without completely replacing the soil on site. And even if we did replace the soil on site, we would still have to go through the same testing and compaction requirements. So there's no guarantee that the soil that we swap out will be any more suitable than what we have there. That's why we selected the 4% cement stabilization, which was the recommendation from Terracon as the project's geotechnical engineer. It is the right solution.

Okay. Thank you.

Other questions? Mr. Sherman?

Mr. Severance? Yes. Mr. Jacklin? Yes. Mr. Ruckman? Yes. Ms. Keener? Yes. Mr. Mahan? Yes. Mrs. Hager? Yes. Mr. Miller? Yes.

Resolution is adopted. That concludes the legislative portion of the meeting for this evening. I call for adjournment. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. We adjourn. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed nay. We are adjourned.