Price for Fort Wayne tree removal goes up

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) -- The city of Fort Wayne will have to pay more than twice as much as expected to remove thousands of ash trees being killed by an invasive beetle after a contractor who bid a bargain price determined his company couldn't complete the job.

Cook's Tree Service of Angola has asked to default on its nearly $590,000 contract to remove the majority of the remaining 4,500 ash trees from along city streets, Fort Wayne parks superintendent Steve McDaniel told The Journal Gazette for a story published Friday (http://bit.ly/NdG6hE ).

Robert Cook, the company's owner, has said said his low price was the result of a math error but that he had hoped to complete the contract anyway.

But McDaniel said Cook asked to call off the deal after he lost his entire workforce of 20 employees during the first five days on the job. He said the company will be paid a few thousand dollars for the 60 to 70 trees it did remove.

"When it appears too good to believe, it probably is," said Parks Director Al Moll, who had been skeptical of Cook's ability to do the work at the price he bid.

McDaniel said the city will hire Mudrack Tree Service of Fort Wayne for $1.2 million, the next-lowest offer. The project was originally estimated to cost $1.5 million, and the City Council had authorized the parks department to spend up to that much. The City Council could approve the new contract by Aug. 28, which McDaniels said would put the project about a month behind schedule.

The emerald ash borer has gutted the city's ash tree population, dropping it from a peak of about 14,000 to less than 8,000. Crews are just now finishing the 2011 contract to remove about 3,700 ash trees.

The parks department had hoped the lower contract cost would allow it to use the leftover money to remove the ash trees that will remain after this round of removal is completed and replace dead trees. Any money left from that work also could have been used to replace the dead trees.

The ash borer is a small, metallic-green beetle that's native to Asia. It has decimated ash trees in several states since 2002.