The Chesterton Redevelopment Commission is not scheduled—at a special meeting at 6:45 p.m. Monday, July 9—to award the contract for the Ind. 49 Utility Corridor Project.

Members are scheduled, however, to consider—in the form of a resolution—a “determination of the need to capture tax increment revenues.”

Under Indiana Code, redevelopment commissions are required to make such determinations, related to their need to capture TIF revenues, for the following budget year. Those revenues are needed, according to the resolution in question, “to make, when due, principal and interest payments on bonds issued or to be issued.”

Under the resolution, the commission must advise all taxing units which are wholly or partly located in the Town of Chesterton’s TIF districts—including Porter County and the Duneland School Corporation—of this determination.

Meanwhile, the commission is not scheduled on Monday to award the contract for the Ind. 49 project, under which sanitary sewer, stormwater, water, and fiber optic infrastructure will be installed—solely to serve property developed within the town—south of the Indiana Toll Road and to Chesterton’s southernmost corporate limit.

At its last meeting, five bids were received. The lowest and highest base bids respectively: $2,128,059 from LGS Plumbing Inc. of Crown Point, $3,106,000 from Haas Construction Company Inc. of Calumet City, Ill.

There were also five alternate bids, to cover the cost of upsizing the sanitary sewer line to enable it to serve property developed outside the town in unincorporated Liberty Township. The lowest and highest alternative bids respectively: $742,409 from LGS Plumbing Inc., $912,000 from Haas Construction Company Inc.

The alternate bid would be the amount paid by Porter County—not the town—to upsize the sanitary sewer lines to serve development outside Chesterton, and on Wednesday the Porter County Commissioners voted 2-1 formally to ask the Porter County Council to designate the upsizing as a CEDIT project.

Posted 7/6/2012