Sheriff Doug Vantlin (right) and jail commander Noble Parish listen as members of a committee charged with overseeing contruction of an expansion to the Knox County Jail receive some rather bad news Tuesday -- the project is about $10 million over budget
Members of a committee charged with overseeing the construction of a possible expansion to the Knox County Jail were stunned silent Tuesday as representatives with Terre Haute-based Garmong Construction delivered some rather bad news.
The project, as it’s currently drawn, is about $10 million over budget.
Committee members, upon learning of the shortfall, shook their heads in shock, many rubbing their heads repeatedly in frustration.
Jon Manning, the only layperson in the group, was the first to break the silence, summing the situation up rather well.
“This sucks,” he said, to which the group did offer a light-hearted chuckle. “I’m not real happy.”
The county has been working with architects from RQAW, Vincennes, on a possible design for months. Only recently, the county signed a contract bringing Garmong on as a construction manager to oversee the project.
RQAW then handed over their final drawings to Garmong, who then estimated construction to be about $32 million — which is exactly what RQAW estimated months ago.
The county, however, only has about $21 million to spend on actual construction.
County commissioner T.J. Brink was especially frustrated; the committee knew they didn’t have $32 million to spend, and he was under the impression that architects with RQAW, in finalizing the design, would be proposing at least some cuts.
“I thought that’s what you’ve been doing over the last two months,” Brink told the group, specifically Sheriff Doug Vantlin and the architects. “We knew we were at $32 million. I thought you were going to look at what could be cut.
“I don’t see that here,” Brink said. “I don’t even hear us talking about what was on the cutting board.”
The sheriff did say that he had met several times with architect Lara Dawson but that their focus had been on the jail’s needs, not in cutting the overall budget.
“We did not zero in on any cuts,” the sheriff said. “We’ve only been talking about needs.”
Dawson, too, said their numbers were only rough estimates and that Garmong, having just come on board, didn’t get them firm costs until last week.
The county months ago began looking to leverage the income from the reinstated jail tax to bond just over $23 million and combine that with about $2.75 million in cash on hand.
County officials want to move forward both with the addition of a new jail pod to the facility at 2375 S. Old Decker Road as well as a host of other improvements and a building to house community corrections next door.
The first has been experiencing overcrowding problems for years while the latter, also, is outgrowing its downtown facility.
With soft costs rather fixed, Lance Gassert with Garmong said the county has just about $21.5 million to spend on construction, so if they are to proceed, they’ll need to cut $10 million.
And that can’t be done, he said, by simply changing materials.
“We’re not going to find that in flooring and paint,” he said. “This is going to cause some pain. We’re going to have to carve out entire pieces.”
He didn’t, however, indicate that they should panic.
“This isn’t uncommon,” he told the small group gathered inside a training room at the jail. “It happens all the time.
“And we’ll find a solution.”
One option, he said, would be to scrap the new community corrections building altogether, a suggestion that, again, left the group silent.
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