Curtiss responds to CTS
The Curtiss Village Board met for over two hours on Aug. 2 to discuss a variety of matters related to the city’s public works department.
West water tower dispute
The first task at hand was to send a response to Champion Tank Service (CTS) after the company had made it known that they would not be accepting the Village’s excuse for withholding money from a recent project that had been completed by the contractor.
In October of 2021, CTS completed work on the village’s west water tower. The village gave CTS 35 days to complete the work which board member Jonathan Unruh said was about 18 days over the estimated amount of time it should take for the project. After the 35-day deadline, the village would charge CTS $500 per day in late fees.
Unruh said the company took 47 days to complete the project which amounted to a $6,000 late fee deduction. Unruh also said Public Works Director Larry Swarr inspected the work after the village’s own inspectors had OK’d the work and found rust spots and other issues with the work that CTS had done. The village then called CTS back out to the tower to fix the spots that they had missed. Unruh said the village then levied an additional $4,500 during a time period where CTS had to come back and finish work in the spring of 2022.
In a letter to the village, President of CTS Bob Cox said when sending a crew back to the site to fix what had been missed in the fall of 2021, Swarr insisted that the tower be drained so a complete inspection could be performed.
Cox argued that normally, the inspection would have been performed a year after the work had been completed as a part of the company’s one-year warranty.
Cox went on to say that the company would not be returning to perform its one-year inspection because an inspection was performed in spring of 2022 and that the warranty was null and void.
Cox said the $4,500 charge for work done during a warranty inspection was “unfounded and ridiculous.”
According to Cox’s letter, the board had already assessed CTS $6,000 in liquidated damages from work done in the fall of 2021. The village then “withheld” payment from CTS for 12 weeks and paid 50 percent of the bill that was due. After five months passed, the village sent another payment and withheld $4,500 for the liquidated damages on the second visit from CTS.
Unruh said the village charged according to the contract because the scope of the work wasn’t done.
“We made them come back out again and finish the work,” Unruh said. “We charged them liquidated damages on that as well because we don’t consider the project to be complete until it’s done to our specifications.”
In Cox’s letter, he asked the board to send the payment for the $4,500 that was “unjustly held back” from the contracted amount.
Unruh drafted a return statement which said, “The board rejects your assertion that the $4,500 in liquidated damages is ‘unfounded and ridiculous.’” Unruh argued that the village could have charged them a full $8,000 for the time the tower was offline but decided to cut the company a break.
“They want the $4,500 we assessed for liquidated damages for the spring,” Unruh said. “We actually had the tower offl ine 16 days for that. We took out seven of those days for weather which we didn’t have to do.”
Unruh sited the contract in the response: “The [village] and/or its representatives may inspect at any time job progress, surface preparation, paint application, mil thickness, anchor pattern, substrate cleanliness, materials, etc. If any deficiency is found, the contractor shall remedy at their own expense. Any re-work shall not affect completion time.”
The response letter states that Swarr’s inspection found issues with work that was considered completed only in spots that could be accessed without the use of special equipment. Swarr’s insistence on draining the tower stemmed from the possibility that the spots that were unreachable without CTS’s equipment could have had issues as well.
The board also rejected the premise that the warranty period was null and void in the letter and furthermore said the year-long warranty period should have begun in May of 2022 when the return trip was completed instead of fall of 2021.
The board approved the drafted letter and will await Cox’s response.
Abbyland RFP
The board continued ongoing talks with Abbyland regarding what to do with the village’s wastewater system.
“We have a pending wastewater treatment plant upgrade because of phosphorous and ammonia limits coming and we’re also borderline overloading our plant right now. We’re right around the edge of what they consider the max threshhold.”
According to Unruh, Abbyland currently trucks about half of its wastewater from their Curtiss pork plant to Abbotsford to be dealt with at their wastewater plant.
Under Abbyland’s most recent proposal, the village was asked if they could find out what it would cost for Abbyland to treat all of their wastewater at an upgraded Curtiss plant. Swarr tested loads of wastewater that were being hauled to Abbotsford to get some numbers on what would be required of a Curtiss plant.
An initial estimate for an upgraded wastewater plant came out to $12.3 million. Unruh said Abbyland is still trying to weigh costs between upgrading the wastewater facility in Curtiss and upgrading their facility in Abbotsford. According to Unruh, Abbyland will be paying for 90 percent of the wastewater upgrades.
This item will be on a future board agenda.
_ Chip sealing will be done this week on Plaza Drive and Matthias Street.
_ The Wisconsin DNR set new requirements for PFAS and PFOS for water and sewer departments. The village will be potentially testing to see where they are at right now.
_ The board voted to put up no parking signs on Matthias Street from Meridian Street to Plaza Drive and on Plaza Drive.
_ Ongoing talks with the Owen-Withee-Curtiss Fire District Commission regarding the increase in rent for the village’s fire building have yielded no results. Swarr and Unruh decided they would try to talk to members of the commission directly to get more of an understanding of their position.
