Cascade Village Board revolves on wind turbine bids

CASCADE – Although the wrangling about the appropriateness and about the procedural steps taken en route for bidding on the village of Cascade’s wind turbine project to power its wastewater treatment plant continued Tuesday evening, some clearing of the air of controversy apparently also was achieved at meetings of the water and sewer committee and the Village Board.

By the end of the evening, the Village Board unanimously supported the recommendation by Scott Schramm of Strategic Municipal Services, the village’s consulting engineer for its wastewater treatment plant, to award a construction contract to “the apparent low bidder” Kettle View Renewable Energy LLC of Random Lake. Proceeding with the two 100-kilowatt turbine project is still contingent on receiving a $150,000 grant for each unit from both Wisconsin’s Focus on Energy program and the Milwaukee-based WE Energies utility, he emphasized.

Based on Kettle View’s bid of $928,856, the village’s outlay for the project would be reduced to $328,856 with the receipt of the grants. Schramm told the Village Board that Randy Faller of Kettle View, who has been working with the village on the project for at least six months, hopes to obtain confirmation of the grants by mid-September.

“The initial reaction from WE Energies and Focus on Energy has been very favorable” to providing one grant in calendar years 2009 and 2010, Schramm added.

Asked what would happen if grants were made only for 2009, Schramm said that only one turbine would be constructed. He noted that the bids were designed to allow for putting up one or two turbines. Faller’s estimate is that one turbine would provide 58 percent of the electric power needed at the treatment plant.

Before the Village Board meeting, Schramm reviewed the three construction bids that were opened in the late afternoon on Tuesday. He found that Seventh Generation Energy Systems of Madison had doublecounted two of the 15 separate items in its original bid and that subtracting the $35,000 error lowered its bid to $1,038,150.

Schramm did not find any computational errors in either Kettle View’s bid or the $1,421,949 bid submitted by Michels Construction of Brownsville. He told the board that he considered Kettle View to be a qualified bidder capable of carrying out the project, which would start later this year if the grants are secured.

As the apparent lower bidder, Kettle View had a 24-hour grace period to disclose any errors it might find in its bid, Schramm indicated. He also noted that the village has the authority to disqualify a bidder after a bid is awarded.

Unlike the village’s pending project for a major upgrade of the wastewater treatment plant, Schramm said he did not believe that pre-qualifying the bidders was necessary for the wind turbine project. All five of the contractors who obtained the specifications for preparing a bid were qualified and “no red flags” appeared in the list of subcontractors identified in Kettle View’s bid, he remarked.

Asked to identify the ingredients that make a contractor qualified, Schramm mentioned experience, longevity, employees, client complaints, litigation, and cash flow. Not believing that Kettle View is qualified, village resident Sue Lodl, who was a village trustee for eight years, addressed the board saying “I highly suggest that you do a full investigation” of the firm.

Without any discussion, the board members approved Schramm’s recommendations in a series of three motions.

“Everything is conditional,” Schramm tried to assure Lodl.

“I agree with Sue that this is a big endeavor,” Village Board President David Jaeckels stated. “I’m sure that we’ve studied it in depth as much as we can.”

At the Water and Sewer Committee meeting before the Village Board session, Lodl had confronted Jaeckels about its actions dating back to March and April of this year pertaining to the wind turbine project. She particularly focused on the failure to approve the minutes of the committee’s April 14 meeting at which a bid by Kettle View was approved for the turbine project. It was $160,000 less than the one competing bid.

In the absence of Village Clerk Sherry Gallagher at that meeting, the minutes were taken by committee member Jerry Hendrickson, who is also a village trustee. The minutes, which were at Hendrickson’s home, were never approved at a subsequent meeting. As she tracked the wind turbine project, Lodl noticed that those minutes had never been approved and pointed this out to Jaeckels.

Regarding the oversight on approving the minutes, Jaeckels took the responsibility. “It was definitely my fault,” he told Lodl. “I’m human. I made an error. I’m sorry.”

He then moved, and the committee agreed, to declare all actions taken at the April 14 meeting to be null and void. At the Village Board meeting later, Jaeckels also asked for and received approval to “clean the slate” on the previous approval of the wind turbine bids.

At the Water and Sewer Committee meeting this week, Lodl also demanded to know why village officials decided to rebid the project. This was necessary because of changes to allow for bidding on bonds and for upgrading the warranty on the turbines from two to five years – changes that were responsible for much of the $27,756 increase in Kettle View’s second bid, he replied.

(In comments to The Review, Lodl asserted that rebidding the contract was not necessary. She suggested that the original contract could have been amended instead to accommodate the changes. She believes the rebidding was done because of the failure to approve the minutes from the meeting at which the bid was awarded.)

Although Jaeckels pointed out that the nullified minutes and the subsequent action by the Village Board contained wording that allowed for “more study” and reconsideration of the project if significant changes were found to be necessary, Lodl was not impressed. She declared that the village’s handling of the entire wind turbine episode “was not up to your usual quality. You’ve been very inept with this whole thing.”

“You’re trying to make it look like we were doing things behind closed doors,” a somewhat exasperated Jaeckels responded. “I am done with your ridiculousness and we’ve got to move on. If you don’t trust me, vote me out.”

A comment of “unbelievable” directed at Lodl then came from the committee table. “Unbelievable, isn’t it? It goes both ways, David,” Lodl retorted.

On another item, the village trustees agreed to drop the idea of a revised comprehensive nuisance ordinance. Comments shared by the trustees indicated the difficulty of enforcement on such matters as what constitutes acceptable appearance or beauty on a property, what is clutter, and what is the appropriate height of lawn grass.

Regarding the Canada geese population at the millpond, the board approved the idea of having the parks board obtain another box of shells for scaring the birds away. Observations were also made that the cutout coyotes might be helping to shoo geese from the site and an idea was presented that swans (apparently a natural enemy of Canada geese) either in live form or as cutouts placed in the water could be an effective deterrent.

The Village Board learned that the landfill tipping fee for municipal garbage is rising by 356 percent due to a new fee set by the state Legislature. “Thank you, Gov. Doyle,” a trustee commented.

Jaeckels appointed Lucas Siebert to a vacant trustee’s seat. He referred to Siebert’s computer skills as a major reason for the selection. Siebert was sworn into office during the meeting Tuesday.