PANAMA CITY — A Bay County commissioner said Monday he wants to dump the contractor overseeing a multimillion-dollar county courthouse expansion project.
The Bay County Commission signed off on the project, with a budget of $13.5 million, in November 2012, but construction still has not begun. The county hired Yates Construction of Destin as the construction manager in April, but the relationship has been fraught with problems, including snippy email exchanges with the architect, and staff has said the firm isn’t easy to work with.
Now Commissioner George Gainer says it’s time to cut Yates loose and find another contractor who can do the job.
“We’re already overdue. Our communications have been terrible. We’re sitting here, what, 14 months later, and I worked on that project five or six years, and I really feel like we need to move on now,” he said in an interview Monday.
Price is the main impasse; Yates is $2 million over budget on its proposal. Gainer made it clear the county would not raise its price.
“One thing that is in stone: That’s all the money we have, and that’s all the money we going to spend,” he said.
Yates’ area manager Mike Lovrekovic said Monday the judges, county officials and the contractor met Friday, and between a new agreed-upon reduction in square footage and the use of value engineering, the project should come in under budget.
“We are continuing to work with the county to get the project under budget, and I’m pretty positive that we’ll be able to do that,” he said.
The judges were on board with the square footage reductions and the building will still meet their originally needs, Lovrekovic said.
Gainer has been the commission’s point man and primary cheerleader for the project. He said that during interviews and discussions no one ever said the county could not build what it wanted for the money it had. The county looked at other courthouses, such as Walton County’s, and thought the project was “very doable.”
“I never did understand exactly why we had the big (price) difference” with Yates, Gainer said, “and it wasn’t just a little bit of difference; it was a lot of money and a lot of square footage. …”
Once the County Commission approves a guaranteed maximum price, Yates would bear any cost overruns, unless the county changed the project’s scope.
Response to emails
Lovrekovic responded to emails criticizing his firm, including one by Assistant County Manager Dan Shaw saying Yates had not been “easy to deal with” and that Judge Michael Overstreet had “wanted to fire Yates for months.”
They do not “paint an accurate picture of where we’re at in the relationship,” Lovrekovic said, noting the emails were from October.
He added, “We have been told that they want us to build the job, and we’ve been tasked with getting it under budget, and (if) we get it under budget, we’ll build the job.”
Commission Chairman Guy Tunnell said he was “hopeful” the problems would be worked out and didn’t want to hire a new contractor. He said it sounds like the county is moving in the right direction now.
“I’d hate to go through the whole process all over again,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of time and some funds expended to get to the point we’re at, and I’d like to think we can work through this.”
County Manager Ed Smith said last week the board needs to accept a within-budget price or fire Yates by its Feb. 4 meeting. If Yates is removed, the county would pay the contractor a $35,000 fee for design services.
Tunnell remained optimistic the problems would be resolved.
“I’m disappointed it’s taken as long as it has, and I know that the judges are beyond anxious, trying to get this resolved,” he said, adding, “This is something that we’ve really got to push on and we’ve got to break ground and get this project finished.”