City denies contractor change order for Washington Avenue project

Madison City Commissioners want the contractor on the Washington Avenue project to fix an issue that was recently discovered.  During the commission’s meeting on Monday, City Engineer Chad Comes presented commissioners with a change order from D&G Concrete Construction for a sanitary sewer pipe under the railroad tracks that was found to have a problem.  Comes said that through some televising video, they found that there is a slight rise in the carrier pipe underneath the tracks, possibly caused by a rock or other hard object as the pipe was being pulled through. In the change order, the contractor states that “this deviation shall not be cause for this work to currently be deemed to be defective” and included a decrease in the contract price of ten-thousand dollars and an extension of the guarantee for the pipe for a total of three years.

Commissioners voted to deny the change order on a 4-to-1 vote on Monday. 

Comes told commissioners that work can be done to try to alleviate the issue with the pipe, which in turn will cause some delay in the project overall.

Comes said that if nothing is done now, it could mean problems later down the road in that area.

Commissioner Mike Waldner said he doesn’t want the city to have to deal with any problems in this area in the near future.

Commissioner Jeremiah Corbin said that there is a lot of flow already in the area and doesn’t think it will cause any problems.

Corbin voted against denying the change order for the project’s contractor, while the remaining commissioners voted in favor of denying it.