The third time wasn’t the charm for a project that aims to help an organization serve homeless women in Carbon County.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners approved a recommendation from the director of planning and development that rejected the bids for two contracts opened Sept. 18 for the Peaceful Knights Women’s Shelter.

The reason for the bid rejections was due to funding and administrative issues.

Commissioner Chris Lukasevich pointed out that the county has time now that the grant deadline was extended from today to June.

“We actually have more time,” he said, noting that as the project was being reviewed, it was determined the project “wasn’t sufficiently scoped out.”

“That created or left unanswered questions to those who had an interest in bidding,” Lukasevich said.

During a special meeting on Sept. 18, three bids had been received for general and electrical contracts.

A bid for plumbing work, which was received in August, remains on the table as it was not in the bid rejections on Thursday.

The county has until Nov. 14 to act on that bid.

Lukasevich said that the county will now task the county engineer to look at the project scope and rework the scope of work so the two contracts could go back out to bid.

The commissioners hope to have this work done and the bids advertised before Nov. 14; however, the county engineer also has other projects of priority that need to be addressed.

“We are making an honest effort to do what is needed as quickly as we can,” Lukasevich said.

Carbon County has $163,000 in Community Development Block Grant COVID funds that is being used toward the project.

The money was initially awarded to Family Promise of Carbon County, but delays in their plans caused the county to shift the funds to Peaceful Knights.

The location of the new women’s shelter will be at 131-133 N. First St., Lehighton, a building Peaceful Knights purchased several years ago with the hopes of helping more people and has been working on the project.