Kirkland is in another fiscal fight about Juanita Beach Park, this time over the possible need for as much as $850,000 more in funding.
The park along Lake Washington has been the subject of a lot of dispute since the city acquired it from King County in 2002.
The city began an upgrading project there in 2010, awarding the work to DMSL Construction, Inc., then firing DMSL from the work in June and hiring Marshbank Construction 10 days later to complete the work.
The park was partly reopened on Aug. 5.
But more work remains to be done, and in a presentation to the Kirkland City Council Tuesday night, from parks managers, a new money problem was laid out.
The difficulty, explained Michael Cogle, interim deputy director, is that the project is short about $750,000 or more. A project-completion budget shows the city has about $2.5 million available to do the work, but the total cost is expected to be about $3.2 million.
The original DMSL contract was for $1,180,390, with change orders bringing the figure to $1,346,059, parks figures indicate. Of that, some $897,315 was paid to DMSL, leaving $448,744 still available from the original funding.
But in later work, done under a contract awarded to Marshbank without competitive bidding and executed partly because of “strong community interest” in reopening the beachfront, more costs were accumulated.
Part of the added costs came from “non-conformities and defects in DMSL work that were discovered,” a parks presentation added.”Based on a rough order-of-magnitude projection, we anticipate that the cost to complete the work will exceed the DMSL contract balance of approximately $450,000 by an estimated $850,000,” a parks’ financial summary estimated.
To raise the money, the city now is pursuing negotiations with the bonding company for DMSL, First Sealord Surety, Inc., of Villanova, Pa.
But that bonding money isn’t expected to be available for some time, said Cogle.
As an interim measure, the Parks Department on Tuesday sought $750,000 from the city’s General Capital Contingency Fund to complete the Juanita work, and the council approved the allocation.
Meanwhile, First Sealord continues to send representatives to the park, Cogle added, and has requested documents from the city, but so far hasn’t either agreed to or denied the city’s claim.
“I don’t anticipate it will be a quick process,” said Cogle.
Eventually, the city does expect to get some or all of its $750,000 back, he added.
“That’s certainly our expectation,” he said.
