Jail renovation project moves forward

Apr. 15—MOULTRIE — County commissioners agreed to move forward with bidding out the jail renovation and construction project, faced with the possibility of rising construction costs.

Wilkes Evans, representing Allstate Construction, the company that the county has hired to manage the project, told the commissioners that getting the bid to market was important, especially before Georgia school systems started their renovations for the year. He recommended that the county get its bid out first and as soon as possible because construction costs continue to rise.

"Then, let everybody get busy renovating every K-12 school in South Georgia. Getting out ahead of that is important. It's gonna save you some money," he said.

The jail renovation and construction project has been in the planning stages for months and Jim Ingram of Studio 8 Design was hired as the architect to design the project. In November, Colquitt County residents voted to use SPLOST money to help fund it.

Evans told the commission that he was going to talk about where they've been, so far, on the project and where they were going.

He said that he and his company had received a set of documents and, based on some recent projects that they had done, they had needed to get the board some numbers prior to putting it out for sub-bid.

"So that we can make sure that, when we put this thing out to bid, we understand where it could land because it's important that we put out a scope that we feel is in your budget," he said.

Evans went on to say that the numbers that the commission was looking at, which had been distributed to them, were comprised of the projected costs of the housing building and the renovation of the existing kitchen.

"Do you want to go ahead and put the entire scope out to bid? I'm kind of thinking that's going to come in somewhere around these numbers here. Or do we want to work with the sheriff and say, 'Well, we want to dial this scope back a little bit before we put it out for bid.'," he said.

He added that they wouldn't get the same type of value trying to do that after the bid process because of the nature of the design-bid-build process.

After looking through the numbers that they were given, County Administrator Chas Cannon said that he'd like to hear from Sheriff Rod Howell and Mac Lawson, the head of the county's Facilities Maintenance Department because they had been working pretty closely on the project.

"It's bare bones. I mean there's no frills in there. It's just all need, every bit of it. And we've worked closely with the engineers and got everything dialed in," Lawson said. "The maintenance cost will be lower, later."

Evans said that, with the Lowndes County Jail project that Allstate had done, it had come in at about $647 a square foot on bid date with a competitive market.

"This one, we're pretty sure is going to come in about $615, if not a little bit lower on the housing portion, especially," he added.

Evans said that the biggest question was if they put it out to bid and it came back $26 million and some change, were the commissioners going to be okay with that or would they want to cut some stuff, knowing that they may not get back as much on the dollar if they had to go back and change things with the sub-contractors.

He added that he would like to work through some of that before they put it out to bid and Cannon asked Lawson what his thoughts were.

"My thought is we have nailed this thing down and we have cut and cut and cut and it is bare bones. Everything in it is essential. There are no frills period," Lawson responded.

He said that it would house 252 inmates and it would have a steel cell construction and Evans explained that the steel cells were pre-manufactured.

"They show-up on a truck, we set them in place, our superintendent locks the doors. The furniture is in there and it is painted. One person goes in there, which is the fire sprinkler guy, before we turn it over to you. But that product is manufactured in a plant and there's no chipping on the walls or anything like that," he said.

Cannon said that he was told that the construction would last them 50 years. He also said that the sheriff had mentioned that the design of the jail was built to be almost a deterrent for people wanting to come to jail.

Howell said, "Yeah, that's why we're doing a lot of the two-man cells for the 23-hour day lockdown instead of free-roaming."

"I think Mac and the sheriff kind of have got the scope narrowed down as far as we can get it. Would you agree with that, Sheriff?" said Cannon.

Howell said, "We were looking at it and obviously it's above where I wanted to see the first punch thrown."

Cannon, then, asked the commissioners what they thought of the numbers and Commissioner Paul Nagy asked Howell, "Is this what you need?"

Howell responded, "You know what I've talked about we need but that's not the price I need it for."

He said he knew what the number was that they had originally set forth and it was already growing.

"How much are we going to let it continue to grow? You know what I mean? We gotta have a facility. We've got to tear down Pod 2 and 3. Or we'll just keep spending money on it," he said.

Commissioner Marc DeMott asked Cannon if there was a plan to fund it and he replied, "Yes, we're pretty close to getting the USDA loan, which will be a low-cost loan with 2% or 3%."

He also said that, right now, the County was debt-free, as of two or three years ago, so his preference was to take out a loan.

"2% or 3% over a 40-year term and the key for us is to add SPLOST to pay some of this back over the next several SPLOST iterations. So, we'll program some of this into the current SPLOST just for some of the overage but in the future SPLOST, we'll take a large chunk out of that payment with some SPLOST money," Cannon said and added that he felt confident that they could pay-off the loan a lot earlier than 40 years.

Howell said that, once the jail was up to federal standards, they would reach out for those federal contracts again like they used to have with the federal detainees.

"Any little bit that comes in, it's like a business, anything I can get to help off-set the cost is what we're gonna attempt to do," he said.

DeMott said, "I just don't think we've got much choice, honestly."

"I don't think we do either," said Commissioner Johnny Hardin and added that he thought they need to move forward and get some bids out there.

Cannon said, "So, the next step, just so the Commissioners are clear, is that we'll take this and bid it out."

He asked Evans if they would get as many local vendors as possible and he responded that they would. He also said that they would take each part of the job and break it up and bid it out competitively and then come back to the commission with those numbers.

Commission Chairman Denver Braswell asked if there was a consensus and the commissioners agreed to go forward with no objections.

"It's tough doing what I do sometimes and walk in a room, when people see what things cost these days," said Evans, which drew a laughter from the commissioners.