ROCK SPRINGS — The Rock Springs City Council voted to reject the bid for the Century Park West Splash Pad Project during its meeting Tuesday night.
Parks and Recreation Director JJ Syvrud said the sole bid the city received was more than $700,000 than the grant award it received for the project. He said the grant amount given to the city was a reasonable price the city could expect to accomplish the project with.
“We had to deliver this grant in a very short timeline; we only had two weeks to get it together,” Syvrud said. “We didn’t have time to anticipate some of the electrical, sewer needs, as well as some of the adjacent construction we would need.”
He said his lack of foresight and not having worked with “skilled professionals in this arena,” led to the parks department not having enough engineering data to issue a tight bid request.
“There were some unknown costs for bidders,” he said.
Despite the setback, Syvrud believes the department can still complete the splash pad project. He said the city can handle the engineering and associated costs in house, but said there will be other costs the city will need to pay to finish it.
Syvrud said he’s received questions about why the city demolished the pool so early, saying he believed the city would be starting work last summer and wanted to eliminate any perceived bottlenecks. He said the city’s streets department was the only group capable of demolishing the pool and had to work with its limited availability for the project. Regardless, Syvrud said there were a number of structural problems with the old pool that necessitated its demolition.
