One bid not enough for Lombard accessibility project

Lombard received a grant to improve the accessibility of the village hall board room, but requests for bids on the project drew only one response.

And because the $48,618 in grant money for the project comes from the Community Development Block Grant, a federal program, that one lone bid is not good enough.

Village Manager David Hulseberg said approval of the bid was pulled from the village board’s Thursday meeting because Lombard will have to seek special permission from the federal government to approve the bid without receiving others.

Hulseberg said expects permission to be granted and the item to be returned to a later meeting agenda for approval.

Improving the accessibility of the board room, which has a sloped floor but stairs leading to the dais and the podium where community members are allowed to speak, has been on the village’s to-do list for several years, Hulseberg said.

“We’ve had over the years several trustees that had trouble getting up to the dais,” he said, adding some residents wanting to speak also have struggled to access the podium.

The planned project includes removal and replacement of the dais to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act; construction of a ramp leading to the dais; removal of a wall behind the staff table in the center of the room; relocation of the speaker’s podium, the secretary’s desk and the presentation desk; creation of four accessible seating ares on one side of the room; installation of power doors and installation of technology to facilitate paperless meetings.

J-MAC Associates Ltd. of Carol Stream proposed to do the work for $94,183, below the $97,000 the village budgeted for the project. The federal grant money was approved at slightly more than half the budgeted amount.

In August, the village board approved receipt of a separate grant from the Community Development Block Grant worth $22,000. That money will fund an estimated $44,000 worth of washroom accessibility improvements for the facilities on the lower level of village hall.