Council discusses potential litigation on over-budget road project

Prior Lake American

The Prior Lake City Council met in a closed session on Thursday for about 40 minutes to discuss potential litigation regarding the Highway 13 and 150th Street reconstruction project finished in 2016.

Prior Lake Mayor Kirt Briggs said the council provided direction to City Attorney Sarah Schwarzhoff for how to proceed, but he declined to share more.

The city held a mediation with the consultants on the project, Short Elliott Hendrickson, on Tuesday regarding the engineering of the 2015 project.

The original estimate in 2014 for the reconstruction project was $6.5 million. When the project was done in October 2016, the cost was $9.8 million. Prior Lake paid $2.1 million more than planned, and Savage likewise paid $1.2 million more.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation also paid $2.1 million toward the project, an amount that did not change from start to finish.

The overrun was due to change orders and a higher number of property acquisitions than anticipated, which added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost.

Other additional costs included $100,000 for construction drawings that lacked detail about staging of traffic and $94,000 for relocation of a water main. The extra costs were drawn from the city’s general fund reserves.

“The reserve is set up for this type of unique situation,” former Finance Director Don Uram said at the time.

Prior Lake paid more than Savage because Prior Lake assumed more risk in a cost-sharing agreement to get a specific project design. Former City Engineer Larry Poppler said at the time that Short Elliott Hendrickson had “overlooked and underestimated items.”

Lori Carlson contributed to this report.