LAKEPORT — Construction costs are rising for the City of Lakeport. At a meeting Tuesday evening, the Lakeport City Council awarded a bid in the amount of $239,556 to Watsonville-based Granite Construction for roadway rehab, culvert replacements, drainage replacements, and small portions of sidewalk on the block between Sayre and Jones streets west of Lakeshore Boulevard—representing a 67 percent increase over the city’s 2016 estimate for this portion of the Lakeshore Boulevard Roadway Repair Project.
Public Works Director Doug Grider said at the meeting that this portion of roadway “is the last piece of the {Emergency Rehabilitation} projects” following flood damage from the winter of 2016-2017. Responding to comments from the council about the project’s high price tag, Grider illustrated a view of the construction market in California that identified high prices as “the new norm.”
Grider noted that “we just came out of a recession where there was no work” and many construction companies were working for cost. Grider continued to say that the pool of contractors had been greatly reduced in size during the recession: “through hard times, only those that were very fiscally sound made it … small contractors, they’re just not there any more because they couldn’t get the jobs.” According to Grider, “construction costs are going to go up … I do not see these prices going down in the near future.” He added that he believed some smaller contractors will start coming back into business because there are more jobs in recent years.
According to information from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, “the costs of construction are rising rapidly, especially in California… Between January 2011 and January 2016, construction costs rose by 12.6 percent in San Francisco, 13.6 percent in Los Angeles, and 11.8 percent nationwide.”
Grider said that his willingness to accept the bid was heightened not just in light of the uptick in construction prices, but also because “speed is of the essence for us on this project, because we have to get it done before the lake comes up.” Grider added that once the block between Sayre and Jones is finished, “we’re done on Lakeshore with emergency storm damage jobs.”
In another item on the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting, Sutter Lakeside Hospital Chief Administrative Office Dan Peterson informed the council on what had taken place at the hospital in response to the Mendocino Complex-borne mass evacuation orders for Lakeport and its surrounding areas. Peterson said that the hospital was fortunate, due to “amazing work” by staff, to open only six days after the evacuations were lifted.
Peterson said that there had been “little to no” smoke damage in the hospital due to the air conditioning systems being shut down, largely sealing off the building to air from outside. Because of this, however, “two semi-trucks” of supplies were lost to “temperature damage,” including pharmaceuticals, sterile supplies, and various other temperature sensitive supplies.
Many of these supplies, if they were still in usable and safe condition, were donated to a medical mission which would transport them to “third-world countries,” according to Peterson. Council Member Kenneth Parlet commented that he was “really glad to hear that it’s going to a third-world country where they will be happy to get that kind of stuff that we would dispose of.”
Asked what the cost to Sutter Lakeside had been of the emergency and the restocking and cleaning that had fallen out of that, Peterson replied that “I don’t have the final number yet,” but that it had been “no small expense,” and estimated that costs would tally up to “several million dollars all told.” Peterson said the hospital is currently in negotiations to see what will be covered by insurance. “We are hoping a lot of it will be.”
