Jim Thorpe Borough Council is pumping the brakes on two projects it has been planning for several years.

The latest set of bids on renovations to Memorial Hall and a new public works garage came in at $3.72 million and $3.27 million respectively, which is around $1.5 million more each than the borough had originally estimated.

“I got sticker shock looking at these numbers,” Councilman Jay Miller said. “I could never vote for this in good faith. I’m not just going to say let’s go ahead with it and hope for the best. None of us would do that with our own homes.”

The borough had hoped to build a 26,000-square-foot public works garage with nine service bays, planned for property the borough owns across from the water department on West Broadway.

The work on the hall, which would include a new HVAC system, would allow the borough to move its administrative offices to a portion of the top floor of that building, while moving its police department to the bottom floor, which used to be a roller skating rink.

For Miller, however, the borough would not be getting $7.5 million of value.

“It’s a garage,” Miller said. “There is no mother-in-law apartment upstairs.”

Borough Manager Maureen Sterner attributed the high bids in part to material prices rising since the outset of COVID-19.

“These contractors have bid on jobs and, due to COVID-19, prices are escalating, sometimes they can’t get what they need and they are losing their shirts,” Sterner said. “You can see with these bids they are trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. We have no way of knowing how much they are doing that.”

The bids came as a big disappointment to Borough President Greg Strubinger, who has been a staunch supporter of the projects since the beginning.

“The scary thing is these contractors are busy,” Strubinger said. “The sad thing is if you knew we would get through it and it would only be another year, but that is just unknown.”

Jim Thorpe previously rejected a first round of bids for the garage project in September. That low bid came in at just under $3 million.

Mayor Michael Sofranko said he agrees the borough can’t afford to go forward with the work as planned, but he urged council not to ignore what drove the need for the projects in the first place.

“You can’t just ignore the space issues and the security issues,” he said. “I think you should get together a list of those things that are absolutely necessary right now and figure out how to address that.”

The borough had planned to convert the current public works garage, located next to Memorial Hall, for Memorial Park use, and Sterner said it would need a new roof regardless of what council decides in regards to the bids.

Jim Thorpe raised taxes by 2.56 mills in 2021, in large part to help pay for the two proposed projects.

“I would set that money aside so when work is done, that is still used for that purpose,” Miller said.

Sterner told council it could look into a Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant, but local legislators would have to be willing to back it and push it for to be included in the state budget.

“We could apply,” she said “We have everything we need to be able to do that. The projects are shovel ready.”