The Marion County Board Tuesday night voted to move forward with $4,645,819 in improvements to the Law Enforcement Center, Courthouse, and Moose Annex.
Ameresco will oversee the project. At the Law Enforcement Center, it includes $1.8-million to replace the heating and air conditioning systems, $1.5-million to replace many of the electronic doors and operating system, and $372,000 to reroof the building. $829,000 in further work on the heating and air conditioning system at the courthouse that has never worked correctly since being installed a few years ago. $175,000 is included to make improvements to the heating and air condition system at the Moose Records Annex that also is not functioning correctly. Other improvements include bringing the elevator up to code requirements, door replacement and keyless Fob system at the Moose building and putting a new roof on the 911 center.
Building Committee Chair Dr. Creighton Engle says work is all being paid for through federal COVID relief funding.
“Right now a lot of the construction part is just going to get the availability of the contractors I think really. As far as the jail doors, as soon as materials arrive he’s thinking on the outside 36 weeks on the doors to get manufactured, delivered and getting materials in and getting things done.”
Engle says it is disappointing with the amount of tax payers’ dollars spent on past heating and air conditioning work that wasn’t done correctly and now has to be completed again.
“To have to go back and modify some of these systems that should have been done at the time but we aren’t engineers it is disappointing. In the jail, again the units are new but the system is a lot older so that was almost an emergency situation at the time. When we replaced those the heat exchangers had gone bad and left a possibility of carbon monoxide.”
After this work, the county still has $2.6-million in federal recovery money left to spend. Other projects currently under development include elevator cab renovations, courthouse restroom renovation, 911 Center renovations, and construction of a new highway department building.
