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FAIRMONT-- Questions surrounding the $2 million ice compressors the city has purchased for the Martin County Arena was the catalyst for a special Fairmont City Council meeting on Monday.
City Administrator Matt Skaret said the meeting was requested by several city council members after an email was sent out last week making some alleged, potential legal claims. He said that a memo was sent out earlier on Monday that touched on some issues surrounding the compressor installation, particularly around ownership concerns.
Council Member Michele Miller said that she was one of the council members who asked that the council hold a special meeting about the matter. She referenced a Facebook post from Council Member Jay Maynard and also said that she's heard Council Member Britney Kawecki has been putting out false information about the status of the current compressors.
She said she has been asking for months for a meeting between the fair board and the city and the hockey association but that the meeting just happened in the past week and a half.
"It should have happened 60 days ago but it just happened," Miller said.
She also questioned an agreement between the city and the fair board, which she said was made late. Miller voiced frustration with the amount of misinformation going out surrounding the topic which hasn't been corrected.
"Can't we have some communication and transparency about all of this stuff that's going on and if staff failed to do it, that's fine but we should know because I'm getting questions about it all the time," Miller said.
Skaret noted that the project has dated back to 2022 and while he agreed having a written agreement with the fair board about the compressor installation should have happened sooner, he did note that communications took place with prior city administration.
"With the project going back to 2022, there have been about three city administrators involved and two public works directors involved, I think with the staff transition-- and I'm not making excuses-- but with transition mistakes happen," Skaret said.
Council Member Randy Lubenow prefaced his comment by saying that he felt the council was 'back in grade school pointing fingers at each other.'
"Somebody asked me recently why the 2004 agreement was never updated and I confirmed with hockey and the fair board that there was no reason to update the agreement because everyone knows what their role is. Just because someone goes on social media and starts making claims doesn't make it true," Lubenow said.
However he since the city is putting in new compressors he did feel like a new agreement was needed.
Miller said that a meeting should have taken place between the fair board and hockey to review contracts before work was done dealing with a building that they co-own.
"I agree, we should have had things wrote out before we did anything," Lubenow said.
He also alluded to the upcoming Nov. 5 general election where Fairmont citizens will be faced with the option to pass an additional half-cent sales tax to fund the construction of a new ice arena. In previous council meetings, the question of whether to wait to move on the compressors until after the election took place was discussed.
"Yes, I have talked to people with knowledge of the compressors and last hockey season they did work well, but that doesn't mean they'll work well this hockey season or the next hockey season," Lubenow said.
Council Member Britney Kawecki referenced an email she had sent out which had been data requested. In the email, she asked the person, who has done work on the current compressors, whether the city had asked them about the status of the compressors.
"He said the maintenance on the compressors has been excellent. He said that they are not in immediate danger off needing to be replaced now or in the near future," Kawecki said.
Maynard said whether or not the compressors will fail tomorrow or a year from now or 10 years from now does not matter because the city has already purchased replacement which cannot be easily returned.
"The only thing that makes sense to do is install them. I don't know why we're sitting here in the first place," Maynard said.
Miller said she was not against installing them, but that she wanted to make sure the council had all of the information it needed, considering all of the false information surrounding the topic that's out there.
Kawecki brought up the contracts and reminded staff and the rest of the council that she has recently brought up the need to review and update the contracts.
"Now legal is saying,' yeah we should have reviewed the contracts,' now we need to update the contracts. Everything is go, go, go at 100 miles per hour and now we're all looking back saying, 'wow, we did this too fast,'" Kawecki said.
Mayor Lee Baarts said there is a contract in place, though it doesn't deal with the new compressors. Finance Director Paul Hoye shed some light on the conversation of updating the contracts.
"According to the existing contract, before we do any work in that facility we should have had an agreement between the three parties to do improvements," Hoye said.
He said they did not need new contracts, but rather an agreement, and since discovering that the city attorney has been working with all parties to write up an agreement
"As far as redoing the entire 2004 agreement, I had conversations with Cathy, (Reynolds, former city administrator) Jeff O'Neil (former interim city administrator) and I believe that Jeff had responded to the council about revamping the agreement and we felt at the time that it would be best to wait until the referendum in November to determine what those agreements would need to state," Hoye said.
He said there was no pressing reason to change the contract itself because nothing has changed in the operations, but that an amendment could be made with the addition of the new compressors.
"That's why there wasn't a push to redo all of the contracts...I think I still feel at this point it doesn't make sense to do that now before November when things could totally change," Hoye said.
Kawecki said, "the city of Fairmont will own the compressors so until a new agreement is figured out, the city of Fairmnt is also responsible for maintenance and upkeep."
Public Works Director Matthew York confirmed that was true and Skaret pointed out the new compressors have a one year warranty.
No action needed to be taken at the special meeting and it was adjourned after 25 minutes. However, in the regular council meeting that followed, the council, after some discussion, approved a change order with Kraus-Anderson Construction Company for the refrigeration system.
One part of the change order is a time extension of 60 days, moving the completion date from the original date of Aug. 28 (365 days from the contract's inception) to Oct. 27, though the compressors are expected to be operational by Oct. 8.
The second part is a $54,500 increase to the electrical portion of the project. York said that it would not change the project amount to $1.577 million that was approved but would go to additional electrical requirements.
"The engineers designed this to have a second transformer on there to help with electrical peaks to the building and when the state inspector was reviewing this they said that that was not allowed," York said.
While that change does not impact the cost, it does call for the time extension.
Kawecki said she did not have an issue with the time extension, but felt the engineering portion should have been figured out sooner.
"I feel that this is something happening between Kraus-Anderson (construction manager) and JLG (engineer)," Kawecki said.
York pointed out that the project included an $80,000 contingency and the $54,500 will come out of the contingency.
Kawecki asked city attorney Cara Brown of Flaherty Hood to speak to which party was responsible.
"The change order was made by Kraus-Anderson who is your construction manager... it is in your best interest, most of the time, to go with what your project manager is recommending...," Brown said.
Council Member Jay Maynard asked what would happen if none of the contingency was used and York said the city would keep it.
Lubenow made a motion to approve the change order and it passed 4-1 with Kawecki opposed.