SW Iowa Times

During their Jan. 23 meeting, the City Council of Council Bluffs discussed a tree clearing project in town.

The City was looking to clear trees along Steven Road West as a part of the larger roadway project with East Beltway.

The roadway project would construct a new east-west path from Norwood Court to State Orchard Road, which would ease traffic demands, improve emergency access and facilitate future land and economic development. The first step in this final portion would be clearing trees along Steven Road to allow for roadway construction. The trees must be cleared before April 1 as a part of the Migratory Birds restrictions, and getting the tree portion done before that deadline would allow for earlier road grading and have the majority of road construction done in the calendar year of 2023.

"[Holder has] done this work for many years and had a lot of experience of similar scopes, so that made us feel better," Council Bluffs Public Works director Matt Cox said. "He did say that he came and visited the site twice prior to the bid, so he's familiar with the project. So I would recommend that we move forward with accepting his bid. The good thing is it's not real technical work. I mean, it is tree removal. So we can, we will know if he doesn't do it correctly, he can't hide the work. So it's easy to inspect. I think he'll be able to accomplish it."

The City solicited bids for tree clearing as they are required to and received several back. The lowest bid was for just under $57,500 from Holder Excavating LLC. This was almost $30,000 less than the next-lowest bid submitted. The most expensive bid was approximately $400,000. The council questioned this, being concerned by the large gap in price. Cox assured the council that they did a lot of background checking and discussion with the representative from Holder and felt confident in the company's ability to complete the task at the set price.

After the discussion, the council felt more confident in the contractor and the proposed project, so they voted to approve the contract with Holder. Tree removal will occur through February and March, and the City hopes that road construction can begin in March 2023.