Even though the Sweetwater County Commission decided to send out requests for proposals on the construction of two buildings, they aren’t sure if they will move forward or not.
After more than an hour of discussion at last week’s meeting, the Sweetwater County Commission voted unanimously to approve an RFP for the construction of a building for Road and Bridge and the Sweetwater County Fire Department on Lagoon Drive, which is located off of Highway 191 South.
Under the proposal submitted by AIA-EDA Architects, public works facilities, including road and bridge, fleet maintenance, county engineering and facilities will all be relocated into one building on the parcel of land. Additionally, the Sweetwater County Fire Department is at a space that is inadequate for both its current and future development needs. The facility committee recommended both the fire department and road and bridge move out to the Lagoon Drive location.
According to the proposal, the consolidation of the facilities will allow for better operational efficiency when vehicles and personnel are in one location, operational costs will be streamlined. For public works, redundancy of equipment, tools, lifts and supplies will be a significant savings.
The fire department, which has equipment stored in various locations, will have all of its equipment in one location. Since the fire department will be so close to Highway 191 South and Interstate 80, it will allow for faster response times.
How much square footage each facility currently takes up was also looked at before a size was created.
The public works facility and road and bridge will be in a 35,921 square-foot facility, while the fire department will be in an 18,352 square-foot facility. They will share a truck wash building. The entire project is projected to cost about $21.7 million.
This is where the commission started to converse about whether or not it should spend that much money.
“Is this commission on board with it,” Chairman Wally Johnson asked.
He wanted to know if they wanted to move forward on what a previous commission wanted or go another direction.
“I just want to do it right,” Commissioner Randy Wendling said. “If we’re going to do it, we need to do it right.”
Commissioner Roy Lloyd said he isn’t sure of what the county’s financial future will be and he didn’t want to commit the county’s reserves on the project.
Johnson said at first he thought the county could pay for the entire project out of its reserves, but now he thinks it might have to spend 50 percent out of bonds and 50 percent on reverses so the reserves aren’t depleted.
While the commissioners couldn’t agree on how they would pay for it or if they wanted to move forward, they all agreed that they would like better numbers than estimates on how much it would cost and so they voted in favor of sending the projects out for a RFP.
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