Keep your fingers crossed and pray hard were the instructions given to the Oconto County committees overseeing bids for a new law enforcement center.
“We’re still $328,000 over,” county Administrative Coordinator Kevin Hamann said at Wednesday’s meeting of the public property and law enforcement/judiciary committees.
Bids for the $30 million project were scheduled to be opened Tuesday, and Hamann was hopeful they would be below estimates.
“But if they come in over, we’re going to have to have some serious discussions. What do we do?” he said.
One option is to take money from sales tax revenue, and another option is to reduce the scope of the project.
The committees are scheduled to review the bids Wednesday, a day before the County Board is scheduled to approve the them.
About 30 people attended a pre-bid meeting at the courthouse June 29. The meeting was not mandatory, and Hamann said others are “well aware” of the project and might submit bids.
The LEC will be built north of the courthouse in an area where homes and businesses were demolished this spring. It will replace an outdated facility in the courthouse complex that needs major updates and has limited capacity. The facility will include sheriff’s offices, a 911 center and jail with capacity for 150 to 175 inmates.
The committees also reviewed the cost of on-site construction services of $353,600 for a project site superintendent and $167,800 for a project manager, for a total of $530,400. The superintendent and manager would be employees of The Samuels Group, a consulting firm assisting the county with the LEC project.
The $530,400 figure caught committee members off guard.
“For two guys? I’m in the wrong job,” said Dennis Kroll, a member of the law enforcement/judiciary committee.
In June 2014, the County Board agreed to pay The Samuels Group $580,000, plus “reimbursables for construction services” to be approved at a later date. At the time, Kurt Berner of The Samuels Group gave the County Board an estimate of $200,000 to $250,000 for reimbursables. Last week, he informed Hamann the cost would be $530,000.
“We need to talk to him and get that number down, because there’s no way I can recommend to the board $530,000 when he gave us an estimate — ballpark $200,000,” Hamann said.
The committees are scheduled to meet with Berner on Wednesday when they review the bids for the LEC.
The $530,400 is based on a construction start date of July 24 and a completion date of July 6, 2017. The committee plans to discuss the completion date with Berner.
“We’re getting charged for an extra five months of services,” said Supervisor Paul Bednarik, member of the law enforcement and judiciary committee. “That’s going to be unnecessary. I hope it’s going to be unnecessary.”
Construction was originally scheduled to end in December 2016 or January 2017. The date was extended when the design team agreed to keep the inmates in Oconto County rather than relocate them to another jail. The decision was made for ease and security reasons and wasn’t expected to substantially increase the project costs.
The county plans to open the LEC before demolishing a portion of the current jail in the courthouse to construct a secure corridor linking the building to the LEC. Inmates will be transferred to court appearances through the corridor. A separate corridor linking the LEC and courthouse will be open to the public and staff members.
According to a preliminary schedule, demolition of the existing jail is scheduled to begin Feb. 15, 2017. Work on the building connector is slated to start March 22, 2017, and be completed July 3, 2017.
In addition to questions regarding the completion date, committee members also discussed how much time the manager and supervisor should spend at the site.
“I don’t know if we need someone here 40 hours a week, every week,” Hamann said.
“You don’t want a construction manager here two or three days a week. That’s a disaster,” Bednarik responded. “You want him here every day.”
“But does he need to be here eight hours a day? That’s something we’re going to be talking about,” Hamann said. “We’ve got to come up with something better than this (the $530,400 expense).”
He said the county has the option of terminating its contract with The Samuels Group and hiring someone else, but that would put the project on hold.
