The lone bid the city received last week for the construction of a historical plaza on the corner of Second and Beech streets came in at least $106,000 over what the city has budgeted for the project.

The City Council must now decide whether to allocate more money for the project or delay it indefinitely.

The city has set aside $600,000 to construct the plaza, in which it planned to display a controversial Ten Commandments monument along with five other monuments honoring documents important to the development of American law, City Engineer Hal Hutchinson said Friday.

When the city put the project out for bid earlier this month, the only bid it received was at least $706,000 - or 17.7 percent - over what the city had budgeted, Hutchinson said.

The bid was from Casper's Andreen Hunt Construction Inc. and does not include a prominent water feature the city had planned for the plaza, Hutchinson said.

With the water feature, Andreen Hunt's price goes up to $816,000, which is $216,000, or 36 percent, over what the city had budgeted, he added.

The water feature would be made of rock and would have circulating water so as to resemble a babbling brook, Hutchinson said.

The Casper City Council will discuss whether to accept Andreen Hunt's bid, and in what form the bid should be accepted if the council wishes to proceed with the project, at a work session on June 7, City Manager Tom Forslund said.

Andreen Hunt's bid, either in its $706,000 or its $816,000 form, does not include the $37,000 cost of the five new monuments the city plans to acquire for the plaza, Hutchinson said.

The city had planned to look at several options for buying the new monuments, including asking for private assistance.

The documents honored on the five new monuments would be the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence.

The city had planned to place the five monuments alongside its Ten Commandments monument in order to play up the historic, rather than the religious, significance of the Decalogue.

Last year, the city removed its Ten Commandments monument from City Park after the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church threatened legal action against the city.

The council felt that a more secular display of the Ten Commandments would be more in line with the First Amendment's mandate for separation of church and state, and would protect the city against possible legal action.

Currently, the Ten Commandments monument sits in storage.