An aerial picture of the Chenango County owned Cook Park in the Town of Greene. (Photo from the Chenango County website)

GREENE – In an effort to attract more visitors to the county-owned Cook Park in Greene, county administrators are re-examining a proposal to upgrade the park’s bathhouses despite contractors’ estimates that far exceed their budget.

County officials talked through the next steps for the project at a meeting of the Ag, Buildings and Grounds committee Tuesday, with Jennifer Kelly of the Chenango County Soil and Water Conservation District giving committee members an overview of project hangups.

“I don’t know as if some of the smaller contractors in the area would be interested in bidding on this project,” Kelly told the committee, citing the county’s bidding process that she said may be too cumbersome for small contractors. “We want a way to make the process easier and attract other potential bidders who are qualified to do the work but too overwhelmed by all the red tape.”

Kelly suggested the county consider either changing its bidding process or changing the scope of the project to entice more bids.

The Soil and Water Conservation District has set aside nearly $97,000 to help fund the project while the county has $50,000 available from its own coffers. The county has solicited contractor bids two times this year; but in both cases, only large contractors looked at the project with the lowest bids being upwards of $380,000 and some breaching half a million.

“It’s unclear if we can continue to send this out to bid and expect to receive something within our budget,” said Kelly.

Nevertheless, county officials argue that park improvements are needed to make Cook Park an asset. The Ag, Buildings and Grounds Committee is now looking at ways to break the project apart into different phases in hopes of attracting smaller contractors to perform smaller tasks.

Changing the scope of the project may require additional intervention from the Department of Health for approval – something committee members said they hope to avoid. Keeping the project as it is also ensures the county meets standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“The bids that we have and the contractors that the engineer have sent the bids to are pretty major companies whereas Soil and Water works with a lot of smaller contractors – contractors who are easily capable of doing this bathhouse,” said Ag, Buildings and Grounds Committee Chair John Lawrence. “We did step it down in size between the first and second bid with these major contracts and it was not significant savings. In fact, in one area it went up.”

But getting the attention of smaller contractors may take some legal footwork. The county has a mandated way in which it solicits contractor bids which involves a heavy amount of bureaucratic paperwork. The Soil and Water Conservation District, however, has the ability to make the bidding process more streamlined, attracting more bids from smaller, more affordable contractors. The Ag, Buildings and Grounds Committee is asking help from the county attorney to find whether Soil and Water can legally solicit bids on the county’s behalf.

“This committee has been working for a long time to make Cook Park an asset rather than a liability,” Lawrence said, citing bids that are far beyond the county’s means. “If we entertain this expensive bathhouse, we will go right back into being a liability.”

The Ag, Buildings and Grounds Committee moved to table the discussion for now. Committee members will re-visit it at their September meeting after the county attorney investigates the plausibility of Soil and Water handling the process of soliciting bids.