ESCANABA — A contract for the construction of a car wash at the Delta County Airport was awarded to Escanaba company Roy Ness Contracting and Sales, Inc. by the Delta County Board of Commissioners Tuesday.

During a meeting Tuesday evening, board members reviewed two bids that were received for the car wash project.

“When we bid out this project, I did ask our engineering firm and the architect to give us just kind of a general idea of the cost of the car wash, and both of them came in around $250,000 as what they figured would be a good bid,” Delta County Airport Manager Andrea Nummilien said.

Roy Ness made a bid of $165,000 with a proposed start date of Aug. 24 and a completion date of Oct. 12. Meanwhile, Viau, Inc. of Powers made a bid of $279,418 with a proposed start date of Aug. 20 and a completion date of Nov. 11.

Due to the disparity between these bids, Nummilien said the architect did some additional research after the bids were received.

“He did reach out to both companies just to make sure that they were both comfortable with their bids, and they both confirmed their bids,” she said.

She also noted the architect recommended that Roy Ness be awarded the contract.

In response to a question from Commissioner Theresa Nelson, Nummilien said the project is being funded by monies from the airport’s customer facility charge fund.

“A percentage of the car rentals’ revenue is put into this fund, so they’re essentially funding it themselves — it’s being set aside for projects such as this,” she said.

With the county board’s acceptance of Roy Ness’ bid, the company will be notified and a contract between Roy Ness and the airport will be prepared.

In other business, the board:

– reviewed an annual actuarial valuation report from the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System (MERS) of Michigan, as presented by MERS Regional Manager Terra Langham.

“As of 12/31/19, the county was 68 percent funded overall. Based on the projections in the annual valuation report … we are projecting you reaching 100 percent funding within about a nine-year timeframe from now,” Langham said.

Langham also asked if the county had plans to make additional payments to MERS of Michigan. Board Chair Patrick Johnson said he did not expect this to happen in the near future because of coronavirus-related concerns.

“Normally, if ’20 went as good as ’19, we would probably say ‘heck, yeah.’ But with everybody kind of guarding their purse a little bit, not really knowing what the future holds, we probably won’t be doing extra contributions,” he said.

– approved the creation and filling of a mechanical and plumbing inspector position for the county.

– authorized the continuation of an existing circuit court contract into 2021. Contract negotiations will take place in September of that year.

– approved a starting salary of $53,500 for the circuit court administrator position.

– moved to send a letter to OHM Advisors asking for additional information on a master plan contract amendment it proposed.

– upheld the original response to a Freedom of Information Act appeal the county received.

– agreed to fill the position of family advocate.

– decided to increase the county’s maximum bandwidth to 500Mbps.

– approved the donation of medical leave to a county employee.

– entered executive session to discuss a settlement on the lawsuit “Dennis L. Hopkins v. Delta County, et al.” with the county’s attorney. After returning to open session, the board moved to accept a settlement recommendation as presented by its attorney. No additional information on the settlement was made available Tuesday evening.