Concept drawing of upgrades to the front of City Hall presented during CIP approval and at a recent meeting
At a recent meeting, Milford City Council rejected the redesign of the City Hall Plaza presented by Public Works Director Brad Dennehy. The project, which was approved in the current fiscal year budget, was deemed too expensive.
“The bid was publicly advertised, and documents sent to several contractors. Thompson & Son bid $491,805 with two bid alternates. The first alternate was DelDOT work within the sidewalks, curb and roadway, pavements, etc. That was an additional $96,197. The second was to remove the pavers and replace them with stamped and dyed concrete for an additional $3,754,” Dennehy said. “The CIP has an approved amount of $475,000 for this project, leaving $169,102.02 that can be allocated from other projects.”
The design included adding stamped concreate pavers in the grass area in front of City Hall, blocking the entrance to the front of the building with ballasts and moving the payment box located out front to the Customer Service building on South Walnut Street. Dennehy explained this was a shovel ready project and the bid was from a company that had worked with the city in the past. He felt the upgrades would add to the beautification efforts of downtown.
Front concept view of upgrades to City Hall
“It looks nice, there’s no argument it’s nice. The issues I have with it are, well, one I don’t want to see this blocked as a through way. I don’t see any value in that. I think the fact that you can pull up here, you can drop payments off, I just don’t see the value in blocking it off,” Mayor Todd Culotta said. “And secondly, pavers are nice. Stamped concrete is nice, but I don’t see the need to spend almost $600,000 in our CIP for something like this.”
Culotta continued.
“We can definitely beautify it. We just don’t have to spend that kind of money. Earlier tonight we heard about sidewalks and the limitations of what that program could look like because of limited funding in the CIP,” Culotta said. “Here we are telling people we can’t afford to fix our sidewalk, but we want to spend half million dollars to make it look prettier in front of City Hall again.”
Councilwoman Madula Kalesis pointed out that there was already money allocated in the budget for the project to which Culotta replied that it was only a placeholder and that the project had not been approved. In fact, there was discussion at a workshop about the need for the expenditure, but since it was a workshop, no decision was made. When the budget and CIP were approved by sitting council in June, the project remained in the CIP as a capital expenditure. Kalesis agreed with the mayor that the cost was significant and felt it could be done at a lower cost.
Concept view from Southeast 2nd Street
“I agree with both the mayor and with Councilwoman Kalesis, particularly in light of the fact the plaza area really only gets used once a year for the tree lighting ceremony,” Councilwoman Nadia Zychal said. “Do we really need to block that access off, when there are people with some vulnerability issues that could use that mailbox for bill payments?”
Culotta stated that he did like the look of the plan, but it should not be a priority.
“The last time we discussed it, it had a parking lot element to it, which I thought was overkill, too. Again, I like this. I’m not saying that we don’t need to make downtown beautiful. Jeez, I live two houses over, but I just think that blocking it off is not necessary,” Culotta said. “I ran on being mayor on transparency, and I think transparency is being accessible. And if you stop people from being able to pull up in front of City Hall to come inside, It just creates one more layer of non-transparency.”
Councilwoman Katrina Wilson felt that the upgrades were a plus but also agreed the cost was significant. She also felt residents would be unhappy that the payment box was blocked.
“To clarify, the payment box was to be relocated near the customer service office so there would still be a payment box. It just wouldn’t be at that location,” City Manager Mark Whitfield said. “The same with the mailbox, the mailbox would be relocated in a location where people can drive up to it”
Councilman Dan Marabello stated that council already approved the project during the budget process and there had already been significant work as well as expense incurred. During the budget discussions in May, a concept drawing was provided to council which showed the ballasts and the pavers as part of the design. Councilman Jason James recalled that it was left in the budget as a placeholder, not completely approved.
Concept view of front of City Hall with pavers
“I agree, after thinking about and seeing it, I’d rather not block off, because City Hall is the people’s house. I think people should be able to pull up and go in that front door and use it to access whatever they want right off the street, walking or drive up in the circle,” James said. “I do believe we should do some of this because it needs to look better than it currently looks. I hope that we decide to minimize the cost, but not kill it. Maybe that wall, a walk through path or something.”
Kalesis questioned why the project had gotten so far along that it was out for bid if council had not approved it.
“When this was first presented, because obviously, I don’t know how much time has lapsed since this was first presented, but time and money has already been spent on this,” Kalesis said. “Instead of wasting time and money, can we figure out ahead of time if we are going to do these projects? I get this was probably a previous council, but this seems to have gotten pretty far along already.”
Culotta stated that the current council had seen the plans in the budget process, but they decided not to move forward, just leave it as a placeholder in the budget.
“That’s not exactly true, Mr. Mayor, we brought this plan before you and got council’s blessing before we took it to bid, I specifically remember Brad bringing this in front of you,” Whitfield said.
A review of past meetings found that the concept plan was presented to council on June 6, 2024, with a drawing of the proposed changes and an estimated cost of $350,000 on page 69 of the CIP. The CIP was approved with the project cost included. City Solicitor David Rutt explained to council that if they were not going to award the bid, they could reject it and send it out for design again.
“I think in terms of the bid, I think if, if this project is not to go through as designed, Solicitor Rutt is correct, we need to reject these bids and ask staff to look at reducing the scope of the project,” Whitfield said. “We will do that with landscaping and bring back another plan before we go to bid again, so that we get your blessing before we move forward with getting a second bid. But we did bring this to council before we put it out the bid,”
James continued to state that the project was left as a placeholder but not fully approved by council during the budget process.
“We discussed it on the during the budget process, also with this council. And we did say we would discuss it. We did agree to some beautification, but we did say we would leave it as a placeholder to discuss, because there was some conversation then about the cost, James said. “I agree with Mark’s recommendation. Let’s regroup, and before they go back to the architect and out for another bid, maybe have a workshop or present it before Council again.”
Dennehy stated that he would take comments from council and see how they could reduce the scope of work.
“It seems to be a consensus that council does not want to block the roadway, but I agree with the comments that we need to do something at City Hall. I have worked for the city for 20 years, and we have done nothing on the exterior of City Hall, other than put a new roof on it, we’ve remodeled chamber councils, but we’ve done nothing to the exterior,” Dennehy said. “And I think, as a resident, I see City Hall as a feature of downtown, I think if we’re focusing on encouraging economic development and tasking residents to upgrade their houses and business owners to do more stuff in the downtown, then we need to lead the charge on that. We need to be a leader in that role of taking care of our own buildings and really making them as presentable and welcoming as possible.”
Council voted to reject the current bid by a vote of seven to one. Dan Marabello was the only no vote. No roll call vote was taken so there were no reasons given for the yay or nay votes.
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