City council is set to award a $3.9 million contract for the final phase of the landfill expansion at their meeting tonight.

City staff say they received three bids for the project, and the lowest came from Northern Alaska Contractors, LLC. The group is run by the same people as Northern Mechanical, a local construction company.

Their bid is about a million dollars lower than the city’s estimate for the project.

This last part of the landfill expansion involves building two new cells for trash disposal. They would last 19 years. So far, the expansion has included a road redesign, new management plans and a new leachate facility.

Public Utilities director Dan Winters says in his memo to the council that the new cells are more than fully funded. Working with Northern Alaska, he says the total cost would be about $5.7 million. The city received an $8.8 million loan from the state for the project, on top of a small state grant and some enterprise funding. They’ll have to pay back whatever part of the loan they don’t use.

Winters estimates the project will be done by October if city council awards the bid tonight.

City council is considering rejecting all the bids they received for a different project: upgrades to the Unalaska City School’s public address system and master clock. The DPW says they received two bids for around $300,000 and one for $77,000. They say the discrepancy means “the scope of the work was not clearly defined,” and they need to re-word it and ask for bids again.

Council will also vote on a handful of budget amendments, including to fund this year’s paving projects. The new paving funds would come directly from money left over after past projects -- a $4.75 million reallocation in total.

Also tonight, council will vote on accepting two state grants for coastal mitigation projects on Unalaska Lake and the Lower Iliuliuk River. The lake grant is for about $626,000 and the river grant is for about $351,000.

Both are aimed at protecting salmon spawning grounds. They come from the state Coastal Impact Assistance Program.

The grants would be used to prevent more sedimentation and stormwater runoff in Unalaska Lake. On the river, the funds would pay for a fish weir near the church hole in downtown Unalaska. The grant narrative submitted to council says this will help restore habitat in the river. It also says the planning process will involve community input to make sure neighbors are “unified” behind the changes.

Council will also hold a public hearing on a new way of billing for ambulance services, which would mean rates would increase. Public Safety director Jamie Sunderland says in his memo to council that the hike is needed to pay a third party who’s now handling the billing. In the past, the Iliuliuk Family & Health Services Clinic handled it internally. Sunderland says the change will increase revenues.

The meeting is at 7 p.m. at City Hall.