The Carroll County Board of Supervisors met Monday morning, with the first item of business being a discussion on Thursday’s jail bid opening, in which all four submitted came in over budget. The lowest, from Badding Construction Company of Carroll, was at $10.9 million, nearly $2 million over the project’s estimated total cost. Michael Lewis, Institutional Team Leader with Shive-Hattery, the architectural and design firm for the project, identified five areas that were mainly responsible for the overages they saw last week.
The others occurred during the design process and included an increase of 10 beds in the jail, the inclusion of a full-service kitchen, an emergency generator that would not only service the new addition but the original courthouse as well and the moving of the location of that generator to inside the parking garage. That change alone cost about $70,000. The final overages Lewis listed came from site development conversations and accommodations through the permitting process with the City of Carroll. Lewis told supervisors they had 30 days to conduct a “value engineering” exercise with the lowest bidder, Badding, and come back with a newly negotiated price. However, Lewis said they don’t believe they will be able to get the bid down as low as what the county has authorization to bond. Supervisor Chair, Neil Bock, brought up the idea of excess money from Local Option Sales Tax (L.O.S.T.) and General funds being used to help offset costs. Rich Ruggles made another recommendation.
The annual return on that investment right now is only at about 2.5 percent, and Ruggles said the county would realize some income by bringing it back to taxable status. One resident in attendance, Dick Collison, commented on this proposal.
Collison added that he agreed with Supervisor Gene Meiners, that you “gotta build it right, you gotta build it functional and you gotta build it safe. And for God’s sake, don’t let all the other outside people pull you and push you and jack you around and you end up losing the original idea in the first place.” This comment was made after Supervisor, Dean Schettler, once again voiced his opinion on the project location.
Others said they did disagree with Schettler, and the cost of building in a different location had its own inherent increased expenses. Lewis said the market conditions would be in play right now regardless of where the building was located. And, they added, this is the plan the voters approved. In the end, the motion to allow Shive-Hattery to work with Badding Construction on the “value engineering” was approved on a vote of four in favor and one, Schettler against. Full audio of the discussion can be found below.
Full audio:
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