Tallulah Falls awards $10,580 contract for water-tank access road

Tallulah Falls Town Council unanimously awarded Harrison Construction a $10,580 contract on May 6, 2021, to work on the Norcup Road access road leading to the town’s water tank. The council also unanimously approved using SPLOST 13 funds for the project, ending the immediate procurement impasse that had left the work without a contractor at its prior meeting.

The short road project mattered because town officials connected it to access for water-tank cleaning. At the earlier discussion, officials said the route would probably need work before a cleaning contractor could bring equipment up the road, making the bid decision part of the town’s planning for maintenance of water infrastructure rather than simply a road-contract choice.

On April 8, Mayor Early told council members the town was still waiting for updated bids from Chad Dixon and Madison. With that information outstanding, the council unanimously tabled the proposed award for the Norcup Road access road rather than select a contractor. By May 6, the council had before it bids from Harrison Construction and Backbone Infrastructure and moved ahead with an award to Harrison.

Council members acted unanimously at both meetings: first to postpone the decision while bid information was incomplete, then to award the contract and designate SPLOST 13 as the funding source. Harrison Construction’s $10,580 bid was far below Backbone Infrastructure’s $51,382 bid and slightly below the project’s $10,860 estimate, according to the May minutes. The April minutes identify Chad Dixon and Madison as prospective bidders whose updated prices had been awaited, but do not state the amounts they submitted or why revisions were needed.

The contract award and funding approval were completed council actions, not proposals. The record establishes the contractor, award amount and funding source, but it does not document a construction start, completion date, final work schedule or whether the road was finished before water-tank cleaning equipment needed access. It also does not say whether the access issue altered the timing of the cleaning itself.

The next public indication of the project’s outcome would be a later Tallulah Falls council agenda or meeting record reporting implementation, a change to the contract or completion of the work. Those records would need to answer what remains unresolved in the minutes: when the access road work occurred, whether it was completed as awarded and how it affected the water-tank cleaning plan.