Officials in the Municipality of the District of Guysborough say they won’t be awarding a tender for a new compost facility.
Municipal officials issued the tender the same August day their federal and provincial counterparts announced more than $1.3 million in funding for two organic material processing buildings; municipal officials were expected to contribute $500,000 to the project.
After October’s regular municipal council meeting Wednesday afternoon, Vernon Pitts, the municipality’s warden, said they received one bid- from Higgins Construction Ltd., a division of Lindsay Construction– and decided they couldn’t go forward.
“The tender came in much higher than what was anticipated- it was quite an amount over our original estimate,” he said. “It’s the money that we had allocated for that project, and it just wasn’t feasible for council to allocate it.”
Councillors were told the bid they did receive was for the $1.8 million expected price tag, but was missing components that would have put the project 30 per cent over budget.
Pitts said it also would have taken too long.
“One of the major concerns with council was the duration of the project with the tender that we did receive- it was much too long for what we were expecting,” he said. “We’d like that project all done within the one year.”
Pitts said they’ll apply for an extension to the infrastructure funding, then do the project themselves.
He said they’ll tender certain aspects of it, with the hope of starting construction in the spring of 2020.
