Animal shelter bid issues on tap in front of Carson City Board of Supervisors

A new, $4.2 million Carson City animal shelter project goes to the Board of Supervisors Thursday with both a low bid recommendation and a bid protest on the agenda.

The board agenda shows two items related to the project, the first a bid protest from K7 Construction challenging whether Shaheen Beauchamp, LLC, should get the low bid designation and contract to build the facility. After that, if the protest is rejected, an item if adopted would determine Shaheen Beauchamp is the low bidder at about $3 million and award to it the contract called Carson City Animal Services Facility.

“Shaheen’s failure to properly complete the subcontractor’s sheet (BP10) is in violation of the express instructions of the BP10 Form and Shaheen failed to identify the names and license numbers on its 1 percent list of all first tier subcontractors who will be performing more than 1 percent of the work,” according to the protest filed by K7 through the Reno law firm Robison, Belaustegus, Sharp & Low. The protest called it a state law violation.

Bid tabulation documents show Shaheen bid $3,063,000 while K7 was next at $3,117,900. There were seven bids submitted with five others ranging from more than $3.2 million to more than $3.6 million.

The overall project cost is pegged at $4,228,695 when contingency funds, the furniture, fixtures and equipment budget, owner furnished items for construction, design, testing, inspections, permitting and utilities are added to construction costs.

Available funding is pegged at $4,478,099. Of that, nearly $4 million comes from infrastructure tax sources, which means part of the one-eighth of a penny city sales tax hike of 2014. The rest is from the Carson Animal Services Initiative, at $193,777; other donations, at $59,323; and the Nevada Humane Society (NHS), at $225,000.

Reno-based NHS runs the current facility for the city via a $700,000 contract and put up the $225,000 to avoid trims in the facility being built. A prior bidding process early in 2015 resulted in bids city government said came in higher than the amount budgeted, so some things had to be and were cut.

City Manager Nick Marano ordered value engineering to cut costs after spurning those higher bids, but still tried to keep some NHS and animal advocate wishes intact.

Another matter on Thursday’s agenda will extend a contract with the Brewery Arts Center for so-called Public Access TV until the end of this year, but as a transition period for the Carson City Technology Department to establish policies and procedures to establish methods to handle it internally instead beginning next year. The recommendation to change, documents say, would provide greater control at lower cost.

Thursday’s board meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. in the Sierra Room at the Carson City Community City, 851 E. William St., but the animal shelter and Access TV matters are 21st on the agenda among various purchasing and contact items. The are expected, however, to come up before the lunch break.