SWEETWATER COUNTY — During the Sweetwater County Commissioner meeting on Tuesday, the commissioners discussed their options and disagreements regarding the Lagoon Drive Consolidated Facility.

The Lagoon Drive Consolidated Facility, a near $21 million project, is a building that would act as both a facility for the Sweetwater County Fire Department and the Sweetwater Public Works building. The facility will be able to house both departments as well as their equipment.

In early 2020, the County had a loan set up with US Bank for the facility costs, pending a lease for the property. However, the lease for the land, which is owned by the Bureau of Land Management, was not secured in time.

This resulted in them losing the opportunity to borrow the money and they had to seek funding elsewhere.

Now, the commissioners have resulted to the county reserves for funding, unless an alternative funding source appears. Sweetwater County Public Works Director Gene Legerski said he has been working on securing a USDA Community Facility loan to supplement the construction costs.

The loan process is in the early stages, however, he said they should have the confirmed loan amount in early October. Legerski is asking for $10-12 million, as that was their original request with the US Bank loan. This means additional costs would still come out of county reserves.

Legerski added that the project costs would be taken out of the county reserves over three physical years, with 25 to 30 percent being taken out in the first physical year, 40 to 50 percent in the second year, and the remaining amount in the third year.

Project Process

Legerski said in the process of this project, the county is in phase one of essentially two phases. About two weeks ago, the county went out for solicitation of Statements of Qualification (SOQ). So far, seven contractors have expressed interest, which Legerski said is due to them needing work.

August 5, the county will accept the SOQs, and on August 17 they will interview the contractors and narrow them down to pre-qualified contractors. On August 25, the county will release the full construction documents, including the design drawings, to the contractors.

On September 17, the bids for the project will be due. On October 6, the prices will be negotiated and the commissioner will be presented the lowest bid to approve for award.

Legerski said they have 27 people working on this project, and they are 33 percent done with the design drawings.

Is it the Right Time for this Project?

The contention on the Board of County Commissioners comes in when deciding how to proceed with this project. The commissioners all agree that the project is a good one, but some of the commission believe now might not be the time for this project.

The options currently are to wait for the bids to come in and then decide how to proceed based off of that information, or to halt the project now due to having to resort to reserves to fund it during tough economic times.

Commissioner Lauren Schoenfeld said she understands a lot of work has been put into this project so far, however, she questioned if the timing is right.

“I don’t want to waste everybody’s time, only to rebid it later,” she said.

Legerski said the cost to rebid would be about $1,000 for advertisement. However, from his experience, Legerski said rebids often come in at higher costs, which could be roughly 10 percent higher than what the original bids would have been.

He also noted that since March, there has been about a 5.3 percent reduction in construction costs. Though he does not expect the bids for this project to be that much lower, he does believe they will come in at a lower cost than they would have before March.

Legerski said the county has already spent nearly $750,000 to get to this point in the project, and the cost for the SOQ and to bid the project has reached nearly $442,000.

Commissioner Roy Lloyd also said he struggles with the timing of the project. Though he doesn’t disagree with waiting for the bids to come in, which both Commissioners Wally Johnson and Jeff Smith strongly support, he said he does have trouble moving forward with the project despite the bids.

Currently, Lloyd said the county has roughly $34 million in reserves, and if they had to take out the full funding, they would be left with about $13 million. He said that “scares” him.

“Sometimes, unfortunately, good projects have to be put on hold because of situations, and this may be one of those situations,” Lloyd said.

Waiting for Bids

Commissioner Smith said he believes in order to make an informed decision, they must be presented the information, which in this case, is the bid amounts and whether or not the county can secure a USDA loan.

Legerski said the bids will include lump sum amounts for each building and the project as a whole. This means there will be separate bids for the combined facility, the public works building alone, and the fire station alone.

Commissioner Smith went on to say that they cannot base decisions on “what if’s” and “maybes”, and that is why they need to wait for the bids, in his opinion.

“Certainly I’m feeling queasy too about a $22 million project that would all come out of reserves. That is hard to swallow and that’s hard to say yes to. But that’s not our only option,” Smith said.

Once the bids come in, he said they will be able to decide if they want to go through with the combined facility, prioritize one building for now, or put the project on hold based on the dollar amounts and the outlook on the economy at that time.

Johnson said he agrees with Commissioner Smith in that they have to wait for the bids to make an informed decision. He said he strongly disagrees with putting the project on hold before they receive the bids.

“There are people working really hard on this and it’s unfair to the people working on this to at this time shoot it in the head,” Johnson said.

Johnson added that the commissioners should not be as worried about the budget amount but rather be worried about what they’re going to do to reduce costs. He said the county should look at implementing another early buy-out program for county employees to trim the government even more and to save costs.

He said the previous commissions have done great work by cutting costs through personnel.

Chairman Randy Wendling said that waiting for the bids is one option, but that the commissioners with concerns are presenting cost-saving options that should be listened to as well.

“The previous commission has done a great job. The one thing the previous commission has not been handed that we are presently handed today is unprecedented things that are going on with revenue, not only at the state and county level, but at a national level,” Wendling said.

What’s Next?

For now, the decision on the Lagoon Drive Consolidated Facility remains unknown. At the next commissioner meeting on Tuesday, August 4, County Treasurer Robb Slaughter and Account Manager Bonnie Berry will talk to the commissioners about financial policies and where they should try to keep their reserves.

That discussion will help drive the next steps with the Lagoon Drive project.

“Is this what this commission at this time, at unprecedented times, feel they want to draw the reserves down on, knowing there may be demands on those reserves for other things? I think that’s the real question in regards to the Lagoon project, not the project itself,” Chairman Wendling said. “No one is questioning if Lagoon is a good project.”