Courthouse facelift project approved

Facilities Operation Manager Fred Davis said the department initially thought the $22,000 from their special projects fund would be enough to cover it, but after requesting quotes from multiple sources and receiving only two, the inaccuracy of the original budget estimate became clear.

“One was $24,870 for washing, plus $70,572 for painting from D&R Masonry,” the proposal stated. “The second was for $63,712 maximum bid from Adam’s Construction.”

The original estimate’s shortfall, Davis said, was due in part to the difficulty surrounding the acquisition of contractor bids earlier on in the project’s planning process.

Although the department requested quotes from a number of vendors, with the first draft of the project featuring two local vendors and one based in Portland, no quotes were generated from that process, Davis said.

“One local vendor was willing to clean the building, but refused to touch the windows with the lead paint we’re using,” he said. “We just weren’t getting any quotes. Since the paint falls under a number of controls, we have to take precautions to ensure no debris falls from where the work is being done. We’ll also be scraping so no dust gets into the air, but what we’re getting out of the deal is something that’s going to give us the best durability we can get.”

Part of the high cost comes from the use of lift equipment, Davis said.

“The price is a guaranteed maximum,” he said. “In theory, if everything goes perfectly, we might even see less than that. My hope would be that this project would fit into what would qualify for the facilities capital reserve which could allocate the additional funds.”

The facilities capital reserve fund has $1.159 million set aside for situations like this, Davis wrote in the project outline.

“We have to do something. We’ve already delayed for a year, and now we’ve come to a situation where what was bad is now worse and we’re only going to see it decline the longer we wait.”

Monica Morris, county finance manager, said Davis had consulted her when he realized the general facilities budget wouldn’t be enough to cover the project.

“I would recommend that once everything’s finalized, you take the $22,000 he budgeted and take the rest of the balance out of the reserve fund,” she told commissioners. “And that next time we have make sure we put more effort into getting an accurate budget amount from the outset.”

Another alternative would be to spread the cost of the total project over two years, in which half the work would be done within the current fiscal year, with the rest completed the next.

“I don’t like the idea of splitting it up and delaying the project,” Commissioner Rod Runyon said. “The cost of bringing in all the equipment a second time means we would just have to pay all that over again if you did it in stages. I say get it done and put it behind us.”

Davis agreed that it would ultimately cost the county less if the entire project were executed in one go.

Although the current contracted amount for the project is $63,712, Davis said there’s a possibility that could go down if the cleaning of the courthouse and the painting of the windows were designated as two separate projects, the first falling under the maintenance category.

“The threshold amount for a project to be considered a public work and subject to the BOLI prevailing wage requirement level is $50,000, but if we split the project up, that could change,” he said.

Commissioner Runyon made the motion to approve the courthouse cleaning and painting project pending review by the City Council, and Commissioner Scott Hege approved it as well, passing the motion unanimously.

“It’s a good project and it needs to be done,” he said. “I don’t think we should put it off if we don’t have to.”