May 3, 2020
By: Dwayne Page
Efforts are underway to cut the proposed construction costs of a new police department building for the City of Smithville.
Bids were opened in March but they were much more than anticipated.
(Click link to view plans)
The lowest of the five bids submitted came from the Boyce Ballard Construction Company of Murfreesboro at $2.685 million for a total roofed area of 12,800 square feet which includes a 1,400 square foot sally port (for driving prisoners into the facility) but does not count the cost of any furnishings which might be needed for the building. Original plans were to keep the project at 8,000 to 9,000 square feet and at or below $2 million.
For some aldermen, the cost ($2.685 million) is too much.
“We need to cut that down. There is a lot of stuff in there priced sky high. I don’t want to put it off. We need to get it (police department out of city hall). I just want to cut this price. Cut corners where you can and tell them to give us a good building and still get what we want,” said Alderman Danny Washer during a work session on March 16.
In the latest workshop Tuesday night, April 28, the mayor and aldermen met with Wayne Oakley of Studio Oakley Architects, LLC of Lebanon who designed the proposed building, prepared construction documents, and assisted the city in putting the project out for bids.
Oakley said the plan could be easily whittled down to $2.5 million without much problem, but any lower and the square footage of the project would have to be downsized.
“If you are telling me to cut this to $2.5 million then we can get there next week but if you tell me we need to get down closer to $2 million then we’ll have a lot of work to do to cut that kind of money out of the project. I think to get to $2.2 million we will have to cut square footage of the building. I would like to know from you guys what are we aiming for and then what I propose to do in conjunction with the mayor and chief is to look at the plans and figure out things we can cut and go to the low bidder and work with them to see if we can negotiate this thing down to where you want it to be. If for some reason we get to a point where we cannot move forward with them (low bidder) then we can drop down to the next lowest bidder or we could revise the bid documents and put it out for bids a second time. I am a little concerned about how many bidders we would have because I do think a lot of the bidders we had from the Nashville area may not come back and bid a second time,” said Oakley.
The proposed facility encompasses a front lobby, records clerk office, hallways, three holding cells, armory, conference and training rooms, offices for the chief, captain, detectives, and other officers, rooms for records, evidence, investigations, filing reports, locker room, electrical room, closets, restrooms, break room, and a sally port.
“I think each of you want the building to be something nice. If you are going to spend $2 million on something you want it to look like its $2 million. There are a lot of features that we need for safety, convenience and workability like a sally port where we can pull in and don’t have to worry about someone (prisoner) running off but there are some things on the inside that we could probably scale back and not remove entirely. I just don’t know how much money that would save. In the design we made it so that 25-30 years from now there would be room for growth in the police department and the mayor and aldermen at that time would not be faced with this problem now. This is something that the city and police department need,” said Chief Mark Collins.
“If we stay with the square footage we have now in this proposal and we cut some things out we have discussed can you come back with an (updated) price,” asked Alderman Washer.
“We can do that,” answered Oakley.
“I like the layout of the plan and I think it is something we need but we also need to get it as close as we can to $2.2 million. If you go past $2.5 million I don’t see it happening,” said Alderman Washer.
During the March 16th work session, John Werner, Vice President of Cumberland Securities of Knoxville met with the Mayor and Aldermen as an advisor to outline financing options through general obligation bonds with repayment terms over 12 to 25 years.
Mayor Miller said Tuesday night, April 28 that he would contact Werner again for some updated projections on what it would cost the city to fund the project for possibly up to 20 years.
“If you are going to have a building that will last for 30, 40, or 50 years then 20 years is not a long payout but at 12 years I think it will push your budget so hard you are going to be looking at a tax increase,” said Janice Plemmons Jackson, the city’s financial advisor.
Jackson also cautioned about possible change orders and cost overruns that would drive up the price of the project.
“Any time I have ever watched people build they think they will spend a certain amount but they wind up spending more. Here we are talking about cutting the cost and getting it down to $2.5 million but if there are cost overruns we may be back to $2.7 or $2.8 million. I bring that up because we were first saying it could be built for not more than $2 million and now we’re already talking about a lot more,” she said.
“I like to think that we have a real tight set of drawings. I think the numbers being as close together as they are from five bidders shows that we are there. Did we miss something? Probably so but I don’t think we are looking at anything substantial,” said Oakley.
Oakley plans to make some suggestions on cuts and bring back an updated proposal to the mayor and aldermen within the next few weeks for consideration.
For more than 40 years the Smithville Police Department has been headquartered in the city hall building downtown.
Police Chief Collins has said the existing police department has outgrown city hall with offices scattered out on both floors of the two story building creating a lack of room and security.
Plans are to build the new police department on the north side of the city hall/fire department complex at Don Cantrell Street on land donated to the city.