The West Central Tribune reports…

The Willmar City Council on Monday, March 2, will consider rescinding the bid award to NC3 for construction of phase one of Willmar Connect and re-awarding the bid to Kramer Service Group.

Hometown Fiber has been contracted to manage the network and the ISPs will pay fees to the city to run on the network. Those fees will be used to fund the debt service and interest on the bonds that will be issued to pay for the construction of the network.

NC3 was awarded the bid for phase one construction on Jan. 20 by the Willmar City Council, having determined at that time that NC3 had demonstrated responsibility, qualifications and financial capacity sufficient to complete the project in accordance with the bid specifications and contract requirements.

However, after the awarding of the bid, NC3 notified the city that it no longer possesses the financial and operational capacity necessary to complete phase one of the project as originally proposed and bid, according to the memo in the agenda packet of materials for the March 2 meeting.

Although NC3 and the staff discussed alterations to the project scope and delivery approach, the alterations deviated from the work as bid and posed a great risk to the city, and staff was no longer confident in the contractors’ ability to perform the work in accordance with the bid documents and conditions under which the award was made, according to the memo.

City staff’s recommendation is to rescind the bid award to NC3 and award it to the next lowest bidder for the project, which is Kramer Service Group of Weyerhaeuser, Wisconsin, in the amount of approximately $8.2 million, according to the memo. The estimate for the cost of the project from Bolton & Menk, the city’s contracted engineers, is a little more than $8 million.

This is a new page of an ongoing story with many chapters.