May 13--Concerns were raised during Monday's meeting of the Corbin City Commission over $80,465 in change orders for a plumbing project for the expo center.

The change orders were completed before the commission was able to approve the changes in order to keep the expo center on track for its March opening date.

Randy Curlew of Wilbur Smith and Associates, the engineering firm for the project, said the change orders from GW Wyatt Contracting were necessary because of the "unforeseen conditions" that resulted from buried fiber optic cables under Falls Highway.

Curlew said contractors were unsure of the location of the cable, and AT&T -- the owners of the cable -- couldn't provide an exact location of the cables. This forced the contract to bury plumbing deeper in the ground to avoid breaking the cable.

Curlew said the risk in hitting the cable was too high because a broken fiber optic cable could cost the city millions of dollars.

Commissioner Dennis Lynch wondered why the $80,465 change order would be necessary since the contract had been approved by the state. Curlew said the fiber optic cable was in unknown condition because the cable wasn't marked on surveys when the state widened Falls Highway, and the work had to be done to get the project finished on time.

"This was crucial, we didn't have time to wait around," Curlew said.

The original price of the project was more than $960,000. With the change orders, the project will cost the city just more than $1,046,000.

The commission voted to approve the change orders, with commissioner Lynch and Phil Gregory voting against the payment.

Curlew also approached the commission with a request for $6,000 for work his firm did in trying to secure a $1.5 million federal Economic Development Agency grant for the construction of the expo center's water tank.

The government did not approve the grant, partly because commissioner Gregory said the application process was finished after construction already began on the tank. Gregory said the delay in applying for the grant likely cost the city the money.

"Why did we wait so long to put that application in?" Gregory asked Curlew. "Not only that, knowing that if we went ahead and bid out that contract ... the first thing they were going to do is turn us down. We got knocked out of a million and five grant because someone didn't do their job."

Curlew said his company had paperwork showing that they had been working on the grant since April of 2006 but waited to file it on the request of the city.