Keystone Heights rejects Lake Geneva cleanup bid – Sole bid was 16x over budget

BY DAN HILDEBRAN

Keystone Heights city council members rejected the sole bid made to cut down and remove trees and underbrush from the dry lake bed of Lake Geneva during the council’s August 4 meeting.

Interim City Manager Jamie Booth told council members that two contractors attended a pre-bid meeting and only one submitted a bid for the work for $1.6 million, exceeding the $100,000 project budget by $1.5 million.

Booth told the council that the contractor had divided the project into three major restoration areas and two minor areas around the lake. He added that the contractor attached a $

Trees surround the Clay County boat ramp near Lake Geneva’s Fifth Avenue. Clay County and the City of Keystone Heights are seeking to remove trees and underbrush from the lakebed before rising water from the Black Creek Water Resource Development Project makes the removal impossible.

bid to each of the three major areas and a $75,000 cost to each of the minor ones.

Theoretically, you (could) award one of those two small restoration areas,” he told council members. But you’re only talking about… five to 10 acres, maybe five out of 340 acres that we are looking at in the entire lake over those five restoration areas.”

Booth explained that the budget-busting cost was due almost exclusively to the permit issued by the state, which requires all trees and underbrush to be removed from the lakebed, rather than burned or ground onsite.

“What I would recommend,” he advised the council, “is not awarding this contract, allowing us to go back together as a team with the county and coordinate with the St. Johns River Water Management District and seek an individual permit, which would then authorize either of the three different ways of (disposing of the project’s waste).”