Parking paving set to begin as Floyd County Law Enforcement Center construction nears finish

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Crews are expected to begin paving the parking for the new Floyd County Law Enforcement Center beginning next week, marking one of the final big exterior projects for the new jail, sheriff’s office and dispatch center.

Training for jailers, dispatchers and others on the new equipment and procedures that will be part of working in the facility is also expected to begin in early May, said county Supervisor Linda Tjaden during LEC updates at the supervisors workshop and regular meetings this week.

“They’re trying to gear up for that and making sure that all the systems are ready to be trained on with the law enforcement center,” Tjaden said. “Dispatch will be part of that. Anybody that they deem as ‘power users’ will have a different set of training, versus those that are basic users of the system and what they’ll learn.”

She said the plan is to video record the training so that is can be used again as needed in the future.

At Monday’s workshop meeting, Brian Shindelar, project superintendent for construction manager The Samuels Group, gave his weekly update on progress with the project.

Work on the inmate’s elevator is finishing up and crews are ready to begin on the public elevator, he said. Data connections for the doors and cameras and intercoms are hoped to be finished by the end of the week so training can begin on operating those systems, and other finishing work is being completed.

With paving work set to begin next week, all the crews were getting their supplies and equipment out of the yard this week, and the fencing was expected to come down toward the end of this week to provide access for the paving.

Sidewalks around the project will need to be closed for about two weeks for the paving, Shindelar said.

Also at the workshop meeting Monday, supervisors again discussed what they see as deficiencies in the job by the project architects, Prochaska & Associates, of Omaha.

Backlit aluminum signage letters for the exterior of the building were listed in the project drawings but not included in the specifications for the project and were not included in the approved bids and contracts, the supervisors discovered recently.

They decided to not add those through change orders now, but to instead put that on the five-year plan for additional work on the project and the courthouse updates.

Bill Huey, an architect who is vice president of construction administration for Prochaska, said via phone Monday morning, “We’ve always maintained that the contract documents consist of both the drawings and the specs.”

He said the signage information was in an addendum to the project so they did not feel they needed to write a spec for it.

“We did note the drawings and provided an enlarged detail of that portion of the wall above the main entrance for the signage, and we called out the information for the signage, the type of fonts, the type of letter to be cut, the material, the electrical feed necessary for that and how that was supposed to be lit,” he said.

“We felt at the time that that information was certainty enough for a sign company to put in a proposal,” Huey said.

Supervisor Roy Schwickerath said there have been several other items in the project where they were in the drawings but not in the specs and the board has had to approve change orders to have them added back in.

“I’m a little confused as to how this one would be different than some of those others,” he said.

Sid Samuels, president and owner of The Samuels Group, who was at the meeting Monday morning, said his group uses the specifications to assign bid categories.

“What triggers those assignments is the specifications section, and that’s how we adjust that,” he said. “The other way to do that is through a clarification, and it you look at some of the bid categories there are clarifications, and so if we would have got that we could have added it as a bid clarification. We did not.”

Huey said, “This is the first time in my 40 years of architectural design and construction that I’ve come across that response back to us, regarding if it’s in a spec or it’s on the drawings. First time. We’ve done CM (construction manager) work previously and this has, like I said, never come up.”

Also at the meetings this week, the supervisors:

• Held a public hearing then passed an amendment to the county’s current fiscal year budget to account for almost $95,000 in additional revenue and $70,000 in additional expenses. No comments were received at the public hearing.
• Noted the hiring of Jennifer Solomon in a combined job where she will be the county 911 administrator and also an assistant to the Floyd County Board of Health, Zoning and Emergency Management offices.
• Discussed whether it is time to change the signage regarding screening people who enter the courthouse for COVID-19 symptoms.
• Discussed training on the Iowa Open Meetings Law and Iowa Open Records Law that the board agreed to take as part of the resolution of a complaint that previous agendas had sometimes not been sufficiently detailed regarding COVID-19 discussions to meet the requirements of Iowa law.

Tjaden said the training would be done during a supervisors workshop meeting, and she suggested inviting the members of other autonomous county boards such as the Board of Health and Conservation Board to take part.

• Discussed setting up a county fund account so that the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) would have a place to deposit funds such as donations and have a way to pay bills such as for the purchase of supplies.

CERT members Ron James and Tom Bock made the presentation, saying the group needs to update some of its equipment, especially flashlights.

• Reset two public hearings for May 11, for an application from Mark and Rebecca Burke to rezone a parcel from agricultural to residential, and for an application for a final plat of Red Cedar Subdivision. Hearings for both of those had been set for the Tuesday meeting, but it was noted that Tuesday was beyond the 20-day limit since publication of the original notices.
• Reviewed and approved applications for tax exemptions for property covered under the so-called “Slough Bill” — such as forest reserve, conservation wetland, native prairie and wildlife habitat.