Colfax Village Board seeking bids to repair municipal building’s west wall
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — The Colfax Village Board is seeking bids to repair the west wall of the Colfax Municipal Building.
Troy Knutson of the Colfax Municipal Building Restoration Group contacted a contractor about a spray concrete to spray the interior basement walls, said Lynn Niggemann, village administrator-clerk-treasurer, at the Colfax Village Board’s May 23 meeting.
The estimate from Premier Gunite LLC out of Holcombe is $6,450 to spray an exposed area on the west wall of the basement that is 10 feet wide by 20 feet high.
CMBRG has declined to cover the cost of spraying the concrete, Niggemann said.
Prior to work completed by A Breeze Construction in 2016 to improve drainage around the outside of the building, after a heavy rain, water would pour into the municipal building basement.
At a cost of about $60,000, A Breeze Construction regraded the green space on the south side of the building to improve drainage, installed area drains to capture water coming off the roof, regraded and paved the parking area in back of the municipal building, installed catch basins in the parking lot, ran pipe from the roof drain downspouts to the catch basins, and installed pipe to drain the catch basins toward the river, removed the window wells on the north and regraded to improve drainage as well as poured concrete to help with draining away water.
The work done by A Breeze Construction solved about 99 percent of the water problems in the basement so that there are now only damp spots in the southeast and southwest corner after extended periods of rain.
The problem with the west wall is that the downspout drain is broken and the stone wall has deteriorated, Niggemann said at the May 23 meeting.
There is only the one estimate, she noted, adding that she had not done any of the leg work to obtain the proposal.
More estimates might be a good idea, Niggemann said.
The Commercial Testing Lab has had work done on the CTL building’s stonework, and Niggemann said she could contact CTL to find out who had done the work.
The stonework needs tuckpointing, said Jeff Prince, village trustee.
Tuckpointing is a process for finishing or repairing the mortar joints between bricks or stones using lime putty or lime mortar.
A quick Google search by the Colfax Messenger came up with three contractors in Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls and Roseville, Minnesota, that do tuckpointing.
The proposal received is to spray concrete to fill the holes, Niggemann said.
There is no guarantee from the contractor that this will work, said Jody Albricht, village president.
If the village is going to pay for repairing the west wall, then the village should be researching contractors and not taking the information from the restoration group, said Carey Davis, village trustee.
Gary Stene, village trustee, made a motion to get more bids for repairing the west wall and said that the village board should consider the bids at the second meeting in June.
The Colfax Village Board unanimously approved the motion.
Fixing the stonework is specialized work, and the village should fix the wall, Stene said.
Rand Bates, director of public works, said he would work on obtaining bids for tuckpointing.
East View drainage
Now that several houses have been built in the East View residential development, drainage of stormwater has become a problem.
There is no drainage on the back side of the lots in East View along Dunn Street, Bates said.
Drainage is not part of the developer’s agreement, and there is a need to get the water to the culvert underneath the railroad tracks so the area drains, he said.
The village is responsible for the drainage, and water does not go where it should, Niggemann said.
The remainder of the property, which was formerly the Jim and Mary Schindler farm, has recently been sold.
Bates said he had talked to Pat Higbie about the village obtaining a strip of land for drainage, and Pat Higbie had said he would talk to John Higbie.
Twenty feet of green space behind the houses could be used for the drainage, Bates said.
The plans for the East View residential development included a drainage pond, Davis said.
The stormwater pond would be part of Phase 3 of the development, Bates said.
The property line runs at an angle, and the village does not now own where the pond would go, he said.
Anne Jenson, village trustee, said the sign that maps out the lots for the entire development should be taken down because the village is no longer going to do the development.
Development could still take place, but developers would have to negotiate with the landowner, Niggemann said.
The village purchased the six lots in Phase 1 six or seven years ago with the intention of giving the lots away to encourage housing development.
So far, two houses have been built and there are plans for a third house.
Some village board members were of the opinion that since the Schindler farm had been sold for agricultural use that it is unlikely more development will take place.
“Money talks,” Bates said.
If land was purchased for $6,000 an acre, it might be quite attractive to sell it for development at $15,000 per acre, he said.
The development of the property is out of the village board’s control, Davis said, and the other village board members agreed.
Recycling grant
In other business, the Colfax Village Board accepted a recycling grant for the Colfax Responsible Unit in the amount of $25,165.33 from the state Department of Natural Resources.
The grant from the state is intended to help offset the costs of recycling for Colfax Solid Waste & Recycling.
According to the letter from the DNR, a total of 200 responsible units applied for the recycling grant. The total population of the responsible units that applied is 3,955,153.
The state Legislature appropriated $1 million for the program, so the 2022 per capita rate is 25.3 cents per person for the recycling grant.
Dunn Street
The Dunn Street project is moving right along, Bates reported.
The water lines have been installed and have been pressure tested, and the lines were being chlorinated at the time of the village board meeting. The next step is safe sample testing, he said.
The sanitary sewer part of the project has been a little more difficult. At Fifth Avenue, there is solid rock for 80 to 100 feet, Bates said.
The contractor made it through the rock and then ran into clay, he said.
