Courthouse contract goes to Springfield firm

The Cole County Commission will contract with a Springfield firm for maintenance and repairs at the courthouse and courthouse annex.

At their Wednesday meeting, commissioners voted unanimously to go with MTS Contracting Inc., which submitted the lowest of three bids to do work such as brick and stone repointing, removing and resetting bricks and repairing stone in these buildings.

Their bid was $188,613.

The commission met with MTS Springfield branch manager Thomas Burch, discussing whether someone needed to be brought in to oversee the project.

Commissioners said they wanted to make sure they felt comfortable the company could do the work without numerous change orders saying none of them had experience with this type of work.

"I don't see any surprises with this project," Burch said. "I saw no places that were caving in or major cracks."

Burch did say it looked like they would have to do lining of gutters and commissioners said they would prepare a request for proposal (RFP) for that.

Burch told commissioners they would keep logs of how much work is done and that could be seen every week.

Western District Commissioner Kris Scheperle asked Burch if they could look at getting materials such as caulking that would have longer warranties - 10 years instead of five as MTS had in its proposal.

Burch said he thought that was possible and pointed out that if commissioners needed to look at other projects the company had done, they could check with the state after they did restoration work at the Capitol and Broadway Building.

It's estimated the work would take four months to complete, and Burch said the work could start next month.