Lincoln Avenue School fire, demolition bids to restart after appeal

Milwaukee Public Schools does a redo on bids after it originally chose a much more expensive bid. And that got people asking questions. It's for the demolition of Lincoln Avenue School. Jason Calvey joining us from the newsroom after questioning the superintendent on this today. So what now? Ted, MPS is going to start that new bidding process next week. You remember back in June, fire destroyed Lincoln Avenue School. Here you can see the video of the flames. In July, the city determined the building must be demolished. Fox 6 reported Monday that the district had originally picked a bid millions of dollars more than a local bid. The district was planning to contract with TW Chicago for roughly $4.8 million, but Milwaukee-based MRD Group says their proposal was rejected and was much cheaper, coming in at $928,000. The MRD Group officially appealed the district's decision, and today MPS says it has agreed to restart the bidding process. We just saw that single contract page for the total number, and that's when we said, hold on a second, this is not an almost $5 million job. Our bid, we didn't undercut our numbers majorly. We're logistically 10 minutes from the job site, so it makes sense that our bid would be more competitive just due to logistics. Thinking about taxpayer money, are you concerned that the original pick was several million dollars more than another? Yeah, I think you know we worked with our insurance company and so the insurance company was working to pay for that funding so that wouldn't have been a loss to the district just so that the public knows that that 4.7 was the negotiated rate with the insurance company to pay that. So the new bidding process is going to start next week and NPS says it hopes to decide on the contractor in the first week of December and then demolition will start after signing a contract. NPS says it expects demolition will finish by the end of March. Ted? Jason Calvey in the newsroom. Thank you.