Cobb County Commissioners are set to vote Tuesday on more money towards another contract for work inside the county’s new $63 million courthouse, but county officials have assured them the project will remain under budget.
Tuesday’s vote calls for an additional $35,942 to install security equipment in the new Superior Court building. The initial $1.7 million contract with Blackcreek Integrated Systems Inc. was approved in July 2009.
The extra money for the security installation is the second such addition commissioners have considered in the past two months. In February, they approved $2,255 more for a $448,257 contract for the installation of audio/video equipment in the courtrooms.
The supplemental funding is based on requests from court officials after they’ve started work in the building, said Virgil Moon, the county’s Support Services director, who is overseeing the project.
“You try to plan as best you can, but once you get in and start operating, you realize that things should be different,” he said.
Three commissioners concerned about exceeding the budgeted funds, questioned the additional security costs Monday.
“It is extremely important from the standpoint that we are making sure that everything is delivered as promised under the conditions as were approved,” said Commissioner Helen Goreham.
The courthouse is being paid for with funds from a 2005 one-percent special sales tax. Throughout the two years of building, Cobb officials have continually touted the courthouse project as being on budget and on schedule.
Turner Construction was selected to build the courthouse, which opened for proceedings in January after a ceremony in December, for $57 million. To keep costs down, the county separated some of the work into individual contracts
“When we have a very large contract and we see the opportunity to take some things out of the general contact that we can handle ourselves we try to do that,” Moon said.
Separating the items saves the county about 10 percent, or $500,000 for the courthouse project, he estimated.
With the courthouse project, items like the security, audio equipment, furniture, structural tests and work towards an environmental certification process were budgeted in a separate set of expenses set at $5.5 million.
The county paid about $2 million buying furniture for the building using a state purchasing department. The brick-and-mortar testing costs about $256,000, and the environmental design costs will be about $19,000, Moon said.
The main contract with Turner, as well as the separate service contracts are expected to be completed later this month.
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