MASON CITY – An unexpected basement found beneath a building being demolished in Mason City will cost the city thousands of extra dollars to have removed.
According to a city hall memo, as 217 2nd Street SW was being demolished by McKiness Excavating, the contractor uncovered what turned out to be an “unknown full basement” beneath a slab. The memo states that the basement has “apparently been left in place following the demolition of the building once located on that site (just adjacent to 217 2nd St. SW.)
“An immediate decision was made to to keep the demolition project moving forward,” the memo states. “The removal of debris involved several loads to the landfill. The total cost of the change order is $12,793.65.”
According to a price list from McKiness, the largest cost involved in removing the basement was filling the basement with clay fill. That cost was $6,660.
City Administrator Brent Trout is recommending approval of this cost to the city council. The council will consider the change order at Tuesday night’s regular meeting.
The project is not budgeted. It is being funded through the use of Tax Increment Financing funds secured from the valuation of the Community Growth TIF District.
I am so glad those buildings are gone such a hazard…now you can see a nice area of trees and it will be nice for citizens just to hang out and relax during nice days. The view is fantastic!!!
really katie thought you might even get this how do you give a bid on tear down without an inspection ,, think this threw before you always open your trap
Take some of your own advice:
The basement had been completely enclosed with concrete and built over. What good would a walk through do? There was NO possible way to know this basement was there with a walk through.
Excuse me, but I do think things through. Do you really think the City would let a bid without them and the bidder doing a walk-through? I think not. The basement was obviously occluded by the slab and grade. It probably had been closed in by the slab years ago before there were even decent records kept. I have perused building records from an old town back to the early 1900’s and they were very incomplete. Ground penetrating radar probably would have been the only way they could have known there was a void under the building and that equipment probably isn’t readily available and is probably expensive.
Did anyone go to the council meeting to ask questions about this? Did anyone ask what kind of records there were and if the basement information was available? Was it even discussed at the meeting? Why has no more been said about this? Matt, were you at the meeting? I’m not even sure there has been a meeting since this came up. I have been a little lax on reading lately.
Really? Excuses Excuses Excuses.. First of all, any credible contractor inspects the job before he gives a bid, to give a proper estimate. Second isn’t it against the law to tear down a building without an asbestos inspection? Because most old building have asbestos in the basements. Now you’re telling me the contractor never did a walk through, the city engineer never did a walk through, the inspection company for asbestos never did a walk though, WOW and you wonder why you have an incompetent city government and leaders.
Where does it say there was asbestos in this building? How do you know there was no walk-through done by any of these people prior to giving and getting a bid? I don’t see that information in this story. Where are you getting all this information?
The basement had been completely enclosed with concrete and built over. What good would a walk through do? There was NO possible way to know this basement was there with a walk through.
Maybe they didn’t do their due diligence. Maybe they did and the records weren’t there. But are they supposed to leave a big hole there as a hazard with that liability? Pay for it themselves? What do you want them to do to solve this problem now? Go to the council meeting and ask questions as to why they didn’t know there was a basement or go research it yourselves to find out if the records were available or not. Then have at it if they really did mess up.
Watchdog and all you bloggers complaining, run for city council so you can change “the behavior of this City Government”.
What the heck are you thinking? The Council & Mayor were voted in to run city business. That’s their job. If you don’t like it, then shut your mouths and run yourself and see how “rewarding” their job is.
Any structure that is built in Mason City has information on what was built on every piece of property from beginning to end. AND to now say that a basement has been all of a sudden discovered; is SO way off base. Who’s responsibility; within city hall; is it to get all information together in order to take bids and to have a complete discription of such an undertaking. Is this not part of the planning that needs to take place to have a building torn down? All of this information is in records for this piece of property. Now taxpayers are to foot the bill for this SNAFU? Seems to me Mason City needs a “hidden or misplaced ” budget for these types of situations. Kinda like the funds that suddenly appeared for the “temporary artwork”. YEA! A SNAFU ACCOUNT. Any left over funds can go to remodling projects.
@Shouldbe-This should not be to much of a surprise. When they were doing Northbridge they had change orders for thousands of dollars because they discovered the old trolley tracks under the cement on Federal Ave. and had to remove them. When I asked the engineer why this had happened he said the old records were incomplete. I told him all they would have had to do was ask most any senior in town and they would have told them they were there. I remember when they covered them and I remember when North Federal was brick. Everything this administration does is a comedy of errors.
That would never have happen in Clear Lake. The CL sanitary district checked under every trailer house, dog house, tree house and a few parked cars looking for sump pumps
It was done in MC also, at least my houses were checked
I know that was a joke. So much for private property. The cops can’t even do that without a search warrant.
FYI: They don’t have to come in your house to check for illegal sump pump hook ups. (those that are hooked in directly to the sanitary sewer, which is illegal).
They just pipe smoke down the sanitary sewer system and then observe the sewer vent pipes on top of your house. Wa-la, if there is smoke coming out of your vent pipe, you just been caught with an illegal sump pump hooked directly into the sanitary sewer system.
I am all for it. It costs us a ton of money to treat rainwater as sewage at the sewage treatment plant.
Back to the topic of the article. Watchdog has it most awfully correct. Mason City Government is ripping the taxpayers off!
That vent on the top of your home is actually connected to the sanitary sewer directly. When they smoke the pipes it’s not checking for sump pumps it’s looking for broken and cracked sewer lines. If you actually watch it being done you might see smoke coming out of the ground and that’s a indicator of a broken sewer line.
Maybe they can pawn a couple statues.
Pawn ALL of the STATUES !
Isn’t it just great that Mason City plays monopoly with our Tax Dollars.
This is a indecent abuse of the use of Tax Increment Financing.
Any thing that this city is doing should be subject the approval of the Tax Payers of this city.
There are a lot of people burning mad at the behaviour of this City Government!
Will YOUR name be on the ballot this fall since you know so much?