By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

A controversial engineering contract for a $21 million upgrade to a county sewage treatment plant will be revised today.

County commissioners are expected to rescind an earlier resolution awarding a contract to the team of CT Consultants and MS Consultants, both of Youngstown, and award it only to CT Consultants.

Commissioner Frank Fuda said Wednesday he is pleased with the way the contract will be rewritten.

But Fuda complained loudly Oct. 6 at a commissioners meeting that the way the initial contract came together raised grave concerns about fairness.

“I think we must revisit this contract for possible rebidding,” Fuda said at the time. “We can’t afford lawsuit after lawsuit,” he added of what he feared might happen if the contract were to be implemented.

Fuda provided reporters with documents from the county’s sanitary engineering department, which had recently come under the authority of Engineer Randy Smith, showing that the process of selecting an engineering firm had been modified.

Smith admitted that he and others overrode the recommendation of three of the top managers in the sanitary engineer’s department and recommended to the commissioners that CT and MS get the contract jointly.

Smith said the reason was that the managers had demonstrated poor decision-making ability in the past, and contracts with single companies had been ineffective in the past.

Fuda said it wasn’t fair to allow CT and MS to become a joint bid because other companies were not afforded the same opportunity to offer a joint bid.

The resolution doesn’t say how much CT Consultants will earn for designing the upgrades to the Mosquito Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant on Anderson Avenue in Howland. Officials have said the price will be negotiated later.

Jim Brutz, an assistant county prosecutor who advises the sanitary engineer’s office, confirmed that CT Consultants will be free to hire MS Consultants to oversee construction of the upgrades if CT choses.

In that sense, it means the same two companies – CT and MS – might still end up doing the same amount of work on the project as specified in the original contract. The difference is that under the new contract, the unsuccessful bidders won’t be able to argue that something unfair occurred, Brutz said.

Fuda said Wednesday he’s pleased that the project will finally move forward with design engineering so that the upgrades can be made sooner rather than later.

He said it will be important that the commissioners also keep an eye on the project as it is being completed to avoid a repeat of the challenges that befell two sewer projects in recent years.

Projects in Kinsman and Vienna townships both resulted in legal battles. And, an arbitrator’s decision in the Kinsman project was expected to cost sewer customers an additional $2.4 million.