Floyd County Supervisors in new boardroom, nearing end of Law Enforcement Center and courthouse project

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

One of the last major tasks has been completed in the Floyd County Law Enforcement Center and courthouse update project, as the county supervisors held the first meeting in their new boardroom Monday morning.

The boardroom is located at the northwest corner of the ground floor of the courthouse, in an area that used to be a garage. It has much more space for the board members as well as for the public to sit in on meetings than was available in the crowded former boardroom on the second floor of the courthouse.

“Welcome to the first meeting of the Board of Supervisors in our new board meeting room,” Supervisor Chair Mark Kuhn announced at the beginning of the meeting. “We’re pleased to be here. We think all the technology is working. We’ve made lots of changes and work preparing for this day.”

The board has a teleconferencing “Owl” placed on the board table for audio and video, along with a teleconferencing speakerphone, and Kuhn said to anyone listening remotely, ”I hope you can hear us loud and clear. … If anytime you cannot hear us we’d like to know about that and see if we can improve it in the future.”

As part of the move to the new boardroom, the former public entrance  on the north side of the courthouse has been closed to the public and is an employee-only entrance now. The public entrance to the courthouse and to the new Law Enforcement Center is now through the new atrium that joins the two buildings and which contains a new elevator and public restrooms for the courthouse.

A short hallway ramp connects the ground floor of the atrium to the ground floor of the courthouse where the board room is located, but the easiest access to the county offices on the upper floors is through the stairway or the elevator in the atrium.

There are still a few projects that contractors are finishing up, and items on a lengthy punch list of needed changes and completions that are being worked through, “but for all intents and purposes the project is over,” Kuhn said.

“We’ve promised the public that we’d be revealing the total cost of the project, where all the monies came from, all the funds,” he said.

Kuhn asked County Auditor Gloria Carr when that information could be ready, and she said any time, as she keeps the records continually updated.

Kuhn said if she’s ready, they’d put that on the agenda for the next meeting, Monday morning Aug. 21.

None of the current members of the board were in office when the project began, first with a successful bond referendum in 2018 then with construction starting in 2019. The initial architect’s estimated cost for the project including the new Law Enforcement Center, the atrium and significant updates to the courthouse was for $11 million to $12 million.

Actual construction bids in 2019 came in at $16.418 million, and the supervisors at that time decided to go ahead with the project by making several cuts in the project, utilizing other funding sources including selling the second half of the approved bonds at a premium price, and using the county’s general fund.

Later, after federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars became available, the previous board and the current board used some of that money for the project.

The latest payment application by construction manager company The Samuels Group shows a total project construction cost of $16.302 million. With the cuts made at the beginning of the project, the total change orders for the project, including reductions and additions, had lowered the original $16.418 million construction cost by $115,642.

Those figures do not include initial land purchase costs, or design and engineering fees by Prochaska & Associates, which, including legal fees to settle a disagreement over payment, will bring the total project cost to more than $18 million.