The City of Meridian is looking to hire a demolition company to knock down condemned structures throughout the town.

In a meeting Tuesday, Community Development Director Craig Hitt asked the city council to remove an agenda item awarding a demolition contract for 12 buildings and re-advertise for 29 buildings. Although five companies submitted bids on the contract, he said, three applications were incomplete and the other two were outside the budgeted amount.

“We received the bids today, and we got five bids,” he said. “Three of the bids were within the range we were anticipating but none of those three packages were complete.”

Contracts have been awarded to take down dozens dilapidated structures in the past year as part of a city-wide effort to address blighted and abandoned properties. At public hearing to address 31 properties in February, Hitt told the council there was a process the city had to go through to condemn a property and community development had numerous other structures in the works.

Highway 80 Trunk Line

The city council on Tuesday also moved forward with the second phase of the Highway 80 Trunk Line project required under the consent decree. The council voted unanimously to award the $1,009,089 project to Hemphill Construction Company.

Public Works Director David Hodge said the project will involve replacing about 1,500 feet of pipe that is likely more than 50-years old.

“This is a hundred percent consent decree work,” he said.

Over time, Hodge said, hydrogen sulfide corrodes the 24-inch concrete pipe until it eventually collapses.

“It just collapses from the top down,” he said. “That’s what happened.”

Storm and Sewer Annual Contract

In Tuesday’s meeting, the council was also asked to approve a storm and sewer rehabilitation annual contract with Hemphill Construction Company in the amount of $9,761,460.

Hodge said the contract would allow the city to create task orders for needed repairs to sewer and storm water infrastructure without bidding out each individual project. Although the bid amount was over $9 million, he said, the actual cost to the city would depend on the size and complexity of the task orders the city assigned.

The first place Hemphill would be put to work was in the medical district, Hodge said. The city has plans in the near future to pave the roads through the medical district but need to correct issues with storm water and sewer pipes before putting down fresh asphalt.

“Before we pave we want to be responsible and fix the serious deficiencies within the storm and sewer pipelines,” he said.

Some of the work needing to be done could be paid out of the consent decree funds, Hodge said, but some would also need to be paid for by the city.

A motion made by Councilman George Thomas to approve the contract died for lack of a second. Council President Dwayne Davis invited the city to bring the contract to a work session for discussion and try to have it approved at a future council meeting.

“We had a motion but we didn’t have a second,” Davis said. “What we can do is discuss it more later in a work session and put it on the next agenda.”