Did the city buy a money pit?

(Tribune photo illustration by Michael Pommier)

Not all commissioners were pleased when the bid for renovations to the new city hall came in during the Aug. 24 meeting.

When the city purchased the building at 123 S. Main St. for the purpose of relocating City Hall, then city manager Joe Turner said there would be about $11,000 worth of renovations, mostly structural, which needed to be made prior to moving operations. The number presented to the commission was significantly higher ... the low bid from Buildet Construction, of Nevada, Mo., in the amount of $96,128 in addition to an alternate item, a dumpster enclosure, in the amount of $13,017; bringing the total cost of the renovations to $109,145.

"I was just surprised that it came in as much as it did," Commissioner Jean Parker said. "I was not under the understanding that it needed that much structural work."

Commissioner Gary Bukowski described the news saying, "It was a bad surprise ... It's just made that building a whole lot more expensive from what we anticipated."

The commissioners were aware that minor work would need to be done because the floor was not rated to properly support City Hall's load which includes storage, file cabinets, and heavy foot traffic. In addition there would need to be some masonry work done to replace broken or missing bricks on the outside of the building. What was not expected was that there were many areas not built to code.

Richard Zingre', project architect, said that the windows needed to be replaced and that there was a large amount of structural support renovations which would need to be made.

"What got me the most was how extensive the renovations would have to be ... it was considerably more than we anticipated," Bukowski said.

Parker added, "I'm thinking a little bit, [Zingre' is] thinking a lot ... maybe there was a miscommunication there."

In addition to the increased structural work, the bid also included the replacing of a stairway on the exterior of the building, which Bukowski said was a safety issue. However, he was not aware until it was time to award the bid that he was informed of an alternate bid which included the construction of a dumpster enclosure to cost more than $13,000.

"That dumpster enclosure was something that -- no, I wasn't aware that it was something that we needed to do or should do ... that wasn't part of the initial discussions," he said.

Not all commissioners were caught off guard. Mayor Dick Hedges said that he knew that there was money budgeted for the renovations -- the final bid price was less than budgeted, according to Fort Scott Director of Finance Susan Brown -- so there must have been some idea of the potential cost of the renovations.

"For whatever reason we have a different opinion on how surprised we are," he said. "You can always second guess."

Now that the decision has been made, the commission can only move forward.

"Right now we can't look at 'what ifs'. We've got to deal with it and roll on," Parker said.

Both Parker and Bukowski agreed saying that the entire situation could have been handled differently. Bukowski said the sense of urgency in making the deal got in the way of having a proper engineering assessment completed.

"On my part, I would have liked a little bit more explanation into how structurally sound it was," Parker said.

As the old saying goes, "hindsight is 20/20," and that is the case with Parker and Bukowski. If the facts were known ahead of time, Parker thinks that the city may not have purchased the building in the first place. Bukowski added that the city could have been better off walking away and letting it go to the private buyer who was believed to be interested in the building as well.

"If I had known prior that it was that bad off, maybe we could have looked at doing something a different with it," Parker said.

"It would have made a difference to me," Bukowski said about having more information prior to the purchase of the building. "I'm not anxious to see us have to throw more money into the project, I was hoping the renovations would be no more than $20,000."

Hedges said that he doesn't believe that the city would have passed on the building saying that the benefits of having full handicap accessibility would have outweighed the additional cost.