Marshall Closes Out $1.99 Million Lead Service Line Replacement Contract

Marshall City Council | September 28, 2026

Article Summary: The Marshall City Council on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, approved a $424,152.50 final payment to B&T Drainage, Inc., closing out a lead water service line replacement contract that reached $1,993,253.00, and separately approved $23,301.25 in engineering invoices from Farnsworth Group on the same project.

Lead Service Line Replacement Key Points:

• Pay application No. 8 and final to B&T Drainage, Inc.: $424,152.50, approved unanimously by the council members present.
• Contract history on the application: original price $1,960,440.00, one approved change order adding $32,813.00, current contract price $1,993,253.00, shown as 100 percent complete.
• A separate $23,301.25 payment to Farnsworth Group covers two invoices from May and June 2026 for field observation and loan administration.
• Farnsworth’s field observation phase is now within $140.15 of its $226,000.00 billing limit.

MARSHALL — The Marshall City Council on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, approved a $424,152.50 final payment to B&T Drainage, Inc., retiring the construction contract on the city’s lead water service line replacement project, a job the contractor’s own paperwork shows was finished and billed in full months before the money was authorized.

Alderman Jarod Green made the motion to approve pay application No. 8 and final; Alderman Warren LeFever seconded it. All council members present voted in favor. Alderman Greg King was the only member absent from the meeting, which Mayor John Hasten called to order at 6:30 p.m.

The contractor’s application for payment, prepared on the standard EJCDC form and carried in the council’s agenda packet, sets out the full arithmetic of the contract. The original contract price was $1,960,440.00. A single approved change order, No. 1, added $32,813.00, bringing the current contract price to $1,993,253.00. The form reports total work completed and stored to date at $1,993,253.00 — the entire contract — against previous payments of $1,569,100.50, leaving the $424,152.50 the council approved.

What the Contract Covered

The progress estimate attached to the application breaks the work into eight unit-price items. The two largest by value are water service connections to the existing main and water service connections to the interior of houses and businesses, recorded at 300 and 280 units respectively. The remaining items cover water service pipe installed by open cut, water service pipe installed by directional drilling, tracer wire, connections at meter pits, and exploratory digs or hydro excavation to verify services. Every line is marked 100 percent complete.

Lead service lines are the pipes that connect a water main to a building. Replacement programs generally involve work on both the utility-owned portion of the connection and the portion running into the structure, which is consistent with the two separate connection items on this contract.

Farnsworth Group is named on the face of the pay application as the engineer on the project, under owner’s project number 2401728.001. The application was signed by John Boyer for the contractor on May 28, 2026, and the payment recommendation was signed by Barbara Healy as engineer on June 18, 2026. The owner’s approval line on the form was blank in the copy distributed to the council.

A Separate Engineering Payment, and an Older Invoice

In a separate action, Alderman Logan Swalls moved and Alderman Michael Smitley seconded approval of $23,301.25 to Farnsworth Group for lead service replacement. All council members present voted in favor.

That figure corresponds exactly to two Farnsworth invoices in the packet on project 02401728.001, titled “Marshall Lead Service Replacement 2024”: invoice 269680, dated May 29, 2026, for $16,334.00 covering the period ending April 30, 2026; and invoice 270106, dated June 17, 2026, for $6,967.25 covering the period ending June 12, 2026.

Both invoices show the project’s first phase, described on the invoices as “Design and Loan Application,” with a total fee of $50,000.00 at 100 percent complete and nothing billed currently. The second phase, “Field Observation & Loan Administration,” carries a billing limit of $226,000.00. After the June invoice, total billings against that phase stand at $225,859.85, leaving $140.15 remaining. The invoices do not name the loan program or lender, and the council’s motion did not state a funding source.

Both Farnsworth invoices also list an earlier invoice, No. 268450, dated April 8, 2026, with an outstanding balance of $38,848.35. That invoice was not among the payments the council approved Monday, and no document in the packet shows whether it has since been paid.

The minutes record no discussion of any of these items. They were moved, seconded, voted and carried in sequence, as were the other eleven action items on the agenda.