County takes social media flak over Peale Avenue bridge bid

LOCK HAVEN, PA – Clinton County board chairman Miles Kessinger, at Thursday’s board meeting, defended the commissioners’ recent decision to award the bid for repairs to the county-owned Peale Avenue bridge in Mill Hall to the second lowest bidder.

The commissioners late last month held a special meeting to change the contractor for the bridge from low bidder Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc. to the second low bidder, Clearwater Construction of Mercer, PA. The move was made, Kessinger said at the time, at the request of PennDOT after state legal action was brought against Hawbaker.

The difference in the bids was $10,158, as reported at the time. But Kessinger noted The Record newspaper had incorrectly listed the Hawbaker bid at $1,184,842 when it was actually $1,284,842. He said comments were “flying around” social media, saying the commissioners were lying about the matter and not transparent; he took pointed exception to that characterization, terming the accusations “completely false.”

Kessinger said social media critics also wanted to know why the county did not rebid the Peale Avenue work, instead of awarding the contract to the second low bidder. He said the county had received 14 bids for the project, all lower than the original estimated cost for the work. He further explained that the federal government was providing 85 percent of the project costs, the state ten percent and the county was responsible for five percent and money for the work was not from county taxpayer dollars, but from Act 13 dollars amassed over recent years from the county’s state-provided Marcellus Shale fund for such projects. He said both the Hawbaker and Clearwater Construction bids were both more than $400,000 lower than the budgeted amount.

(Editor’s note: The Record apologizes for incorrectly reporting the amount of the Hawbaker bid in an earlier story; information about the difference in the Hawbaker and Clearwater bids was correct)