Brazos County continues to move forward with plans to build its own medical examiner’s office and remodel a section of the county administration building with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
During its Tuesday meeting, the Brazos County Commissioners Court received updates on plans for the Brazos County Medical Examiner’s Office and a remodel of the north wing of the county administration building. Commissioners also discussed possible uses for the remaining ARPA funds.
Brazos County Project Manager Trevor Lansdown broke down the spending and schedule for the medical examiner’s office and said the design for the building was nearly complete.
“We have wrapped up the schematic design phase for the site as well as the floor plan,” he said. “We are closely approaching a kickoff for the DD [design development] phase of construction. … The next big milestone is going to be when we hit the 50% construction documents phase and negotiate that guaranteed maximum price with Vaughn [Construction] and hit the ground running with construction.”
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So far, the county has allocated $24.4 million for the construction process: $19.8 million from grants, and $4.6 million from revenue replacement. According to the county, revenue replacement funds are based on state and local grant calculation requirements from the past three years.
Lansdown said that the design contract was given to PGAL and that McClaren, Wilson & Lawrie, Inc. (MWL) have been hired as sub-consultants.
“[MWL] are lab consultants who have a very deep history [in] design on forensic labs,” he said. “They also brought on Dr. Kathryn Pinneri, who is the director of the Montgomery County Forensic Services Department as their subject matter expert. Since we don’t happen to have any on staff, she’s sort of acting in that role for us as we move through the design phase.”
The renovation plans for the county administration building also have entered the design phase, Lansdown said. The $10 million project will be funded by ARPA revenue replacement funds, but $6.6 million has been added to the estimates after damage was found to the building.
During the March 19 Commissioners Court meeting, Ken Burch, the managing principal for PlanNorth Architectural Co. and a Texas A&M graduate, presented a report showing that there was little to no waterproofing to the buildings’ envelope — the outer layer of the structure — and recommended replacing windows, gaskets and frames, and add weatherproofing and insulation.
Although ARPA funds could be used for the $6.6 million in repairs, Lansdown said they are currently not allocated for that. As of Tuesday, the court had not officially decided on a funding source for the repairs.
“I did add that in here, even though it wasn’t going to be funded with ARPA money,” he said. “Just because the plan is to bid it all out as a single package for construction. … We’ve got the north wing at $1.5 million, the sanctuary remodel at $8.825 million and the building envelope work at $6.6 million.”
Lansdown said the construction for the remodel is currently scheduled to begin Oct. 14, after the project is put out for bid on Aug. 28.
Brazos County Auditor Katie Conner spoke to the commissioners after Lansdown and said that the court would have to decide where to spend all of the revenue replacement funds by Dec. 30.
“Some of the choices are going to be, do we want to continue on this path to use revenue replacement with its deadline?” she said. “Obligation would include an actual construction contract. Right now, all we’ve contracted for is going to be design. So, there’s some deadlines coming up.”
Another option would be to use revenue replacement for payroll, Conner said. Either way, the revenue replacement funds must be obligated by the end of the year.
“We could choose to use the payroll from April 2021 through Sept. 30, 2022 [for] law enforcement, that’s over $20 million,” she said. “We could choose to use the current payroll, all county staff. … So, we’re going to have a choice. Do we want to continue on the path of counting revenue replacement to be used for these construction projects or [for] payroll? If we do payroll, we’ve already incurred the payroll expense. That makes [it so] that we don’t have deadlines anymore for these constructions.”