Manufacturer Gives Williston Veterans Memorial Long Awaited Repairs

By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

A two-man work crew from Matthews Granite spent Tuesday correcting all the construction errors that a subcontractor made when building the Veterans Memorial in Williston more than a year ago.

Holes for lights to illuminate military emblems on the side of the memorial had to be drilled in new granite slabs and the top of the

Dr. Ken Schiebert, chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and C.J. Zimoski, utilities and public works director examine the U.S. Coast Guard emblem and the holes for lighting the emblem. The emblem is one of four honoring the branches of the Armed Services.

memorial needed a fresh granite cap with holes for lighting the American flag.

Dr. Ken Schiebert, who heads the Community Development Agency, the group that funded the $60,000 project with CRA funding and a large amount of private donations, was happy to see the work finally completed.

But he had been intensely frustrated by all the delays.

“To put it mildly,” he said.

The expensive repairs to the memorial won’t cost the city anything. A subcontractor for Matthews Granite committed the errors. The company shouldered the financial responsibility for correcting the problems.

The holes for illuminating the emblems were originally drilled to make floodlights shine outward rather inward at the emblems. The holes in the cap were also drilled incorrectly by the subcontractor

When the work crew finishes, the Veterans Memorial will be a community treasure at Heritage Park.

“It’s going to be spectacular at night with all the vertical lighting and the flags,” Schwiebert said.

CRA also plans to build a 40-foot long wall, three feet tall, on the east side of the memorial as a safeguard to protect citizens from traffic moving along the highway behind them. Schiebert said CRA hasn’t decided whether bricks bearing the names of veterans will be used along the front of the concrete block wall.

Donated bricks named for veterans have been installed on the floor of the memorial. Schiebert said there is room for 300 more named bricks around the memorial.

Michael Smith tapes the new granite cap on the memorial as Jake Baker helps him. They are employees of Matthews Granite. The tape enabled them to seal the new cap. A crane lifted the 2000 to 2,500-pound cap into place. The cap will serve as the base for three lights illuminating the American Flag.

When construction was started in the summer of 2017 the game plan was to finish construction in time for Veterans Day last year. Matthews Granite missed the deadline. He said the company also failed to participate in two scheduled phone conferences early in the project.

Schiebert said city officials met with Matthews Granite in January of 2018 and revised the deadline to hopefully have the memorial finished by Armed Forces Day on May 19 this year.

That didn’t happen either.

So the city asked if the company could finish correcting the problems in time before Veterans Day on Nov. 11 this year.

By that point, Matthews Granite wasn’t setting any firm completion date. It was promising to make corrections.

C.J. Zimoski, the city’s utilities and public works director, said city workers measured the memorial for patterns to establish accurate drill-hole sites for correcting the problems in the granite memorial. They sent those patterns to Matthews Granite.

City Manager Scott Lippmann received word about a week ago that a crew was coming down early this week to make corrections to the memorial.

“It took all this time to get it right,” Schiebert said.

City of Williston Veterans Memorial November 27, 2018

Posted November 27, 2018