Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout07-24-2003 Called Meeting CALLED MEETING AUGUSTA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY July 24, 2003 Augusta Richmond County Commission convened at 11:15 a.m., Thursday, July 24, 2003, the Honorable Richard Colclough, Mayor Pro Tem, presiding. MR. COLCLOUGH: Good morning. Please take your seats so we can get started. I want to welcome everyone here this morning, and we're going to try to be as expeditious as possible with this meeting. First of all, I'd like to ask Reverend Hankerson would he do the invocation for us. Reverend Hankerson? And Mr. Kolb will do the pledge. [Invocation and Pledge to the flag.] MR. COLCLOUGH: Thank you. Madam Clerk, do you need the mike? MS. BONNER: No, sir. We'll have a presentation from Turner Associates regarding the proposed judicial center. MR. COLCLOUGH: Mr. Kuhlke? MR. KUHLKE: Ladies and gentlemen, I am Bill Kuhlke, and I'm chairman of the judicial subcommittee that reports back to the commission. We were appointed to that committee in April of 2002, and we went through the process of putting out RQs, and then the selection process of going through and hiring an architect to work with us in coming up with the design for the judicial center. We finally entered into that contract in December of last year. Upon that, we began with the project definition phase of the center, which took two or three months to go through, and that was to determine really what we needed in a consolidated judicial center. So after going through that process, after looking at basically three sites that the judicial center could be placed on, we -- we get here today where our architects are going to present us the three diff -- three separate scenarios of the sites that we looked at. One is the existing judicial center location on Greene Street, the other site being on Reynolds Street on the river, and the other site being at May Park. At this time what I'd like to do is to introduce to you Mr. Oscar Harris, who is the founder and chairman of Turner and Associates. MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Bill, so very much. I'd like to say before we begin the presentation that we do appreciate the fact that we are selected on this project and look forward to a great, great working relationship. Up to this point, as Bill has indicated, we've been working for the last six months and things are coming along very, very well, and we hope you enjoy this presentation. We've brought you all the pros and cons and I think we'll provide to you basically all the information to make whatever choices that you need. And now I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Bitter, David Bitter, and he is the manager, project manager, and he'll go from here. Thank you. 1 MR. BITTER: Thanks. I guess I need to use this thing, right? I can do that. Pleasure to be here. My name is David Bitter. On behalf of the design team who are represented next to me, I'm going to only be a few minutes, and then I'm going to turn it over to my courts expert. Let me introduce who we have here today. Rob Fisch and Frank Greene, or Ricci Greene -- I guess when we were hired it was Ricci, but Frank's done such a good job that they promoted him to a principal, so it's now Ricci Greene. And, of course, you all know Bob, BobWoodhurst, is born and bred here, has helped us a lot. And we have Martin Smith in the background. He's representing Gates Castell, our estimator, helping us keep in line on the dollars. That's it. Logistics, of course. I was reminded to turn my cell phone off. I've done that, so -- we're going to go through this presentation. Rob and Frank are going to lead us through that. We're going to have a time afterwards for questions. I'd like to ask that perhaps you hold your questions to the end so we can get through the presentation, because I'm sure there'll be some questions. We welcome those later. You can address those to the panel. If we can answer the questions, we certainly will today. If not, we'll -- we need a homework assignment, so we'll take it graciously. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rob and Frank and we'll move to the presentation. Thank you. MR. FISCH: Thanks. What I'd like to do is kind of ease us into the project and kind of give you a sense of how we started and how we approached the project. We did a what we call partnering session at the beginning of the project, which included stakeholders from the county, from the courts, as well as from the design team. It was a whole-day session and from that we developed this charter statement. As we like to do on a project, we like to get consensus as to what the ground rules are and what the game plan is. I'm just going to read this. I'm not going to be -- I have the slides, but -- we dedicate our efforts to the design and construction of a functional and attractive courthouse that reflects the values of the community and the integrity of our judicial system. That's really the mission. That's the mission of our team, I think that's the mission of the county as well, and I know it's also the mission of the court. From that we developed goals, what we call measures of success. How do we know -- how do we know we're doing a good job? What are the goals for the project? What are the goals for the team? I'm not going to go through each of these, but I'm going to kind of talk about a number of important ones. I want to start with the top, which is a design responsive to enhance the urban context, and this is very relevant to the site selection process that we're in now. When we started we did not have a site selection process. We started on the presumption that we would be at the current municipal building site. But did -- given this is a very important criteria that needs to be contextually probed. It needs to help in terms of helping the downtown of Augusta. That was pretty much an agreed mission goal. Efficient. We want an efficient courthouse, you want a safe courthouse. The current courthouse is -- does not meet modern standards for safety and security, does not have staff, public, and prisoner circulation as modern courthouses do. It's a very inefficient layout. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. It needs to be open and easily accessible to the public. The ultimate client for this building is the public. This building's going to serve them and the public pays for it, and we all need to be cognizant when we go through our process that – that ultimately that's who we're serving. 2 Just a couple things on budget and schedule. We're going to talk a little bit about budget and it's certainly going to be a big issue for this project, obviously. Schedule affects budget. So when we talk about some of the alternatives that Bill Kuhlke mentioned, time is of essence. The longer a project takes, the more it costs, all other things being equal. Parking needs, we're looking at that. That is one of the important considerations in doing a site analysis, and whether the site we pick now will be expandable in the future. Then at the end I want to create a model judicial facility. What does that mean? I think it means a number of things. It means different things to different stakeholders. I think we all agree that we want this facility to basically be -- it's a legacy for the policy makers in this room that would decide to build this project. It certainly should be a boom or boost to downtown Augusta. We want this to do all those things. That happens through the design. It happens through picking the right site. It happens through making good judgments in terms of how big we build and what goes in the building. Bill Kuhlke kind of talked about this already. I'm not going to go through the project history. We have a handout afterwards that has all these slides. So I want to get through the whole presentation, Frank and I, and then all of this is documented. But I did want to point out that we really started in January in this feasibility process, and that feasibility process, the main things that we started to do was to kind of quantify how big this building is. And although there were some program studies done in the early -- in '98 and updated in 2000, when we went through the process when we were hired, we realized there was a lot of good work there, but there were also some flaws to that process. So we have now developed a program which I'll talk about in a second for the space requirements of this building. We also looked at studying the municipal building site. We were doing that in the early part of this year. And we came to the conclusion that the site as it's currently configured, in terms of property boundaries that were given, is less than adequate to meet all the goals that I just kind of reviewed previously. So that's kind of what helped us spun back in June of 2003 the need to possibly consider some other site options. Either to stay on that site and expand that site by taking the whole block, or to look at some other sites. And that brings us to today. So what are we doing? We need to make a big decision. Which site are we going to put it on? Reynolds, municipal site, or May Park. How big do we build it? We think we've got a -- we think we have a rationale for building what we call a fifteen-year program. We did a ten and twenty-year space projection and we thought the ten year was too soon because it'll take three, four, five years, whatever option we pick, in best case scenario to have this building operational. That doesn't give us a whole lot of growth. Twenty years, we thought, well, that -- nobody has a crystal ball. The further out you go, the less accurate your projections are, and obviously money is a very important issue. So rather than trying to build as much as we can, we want to be prudent and build for some modern expansion. But at the same time we need to have that building flexible and expandable for future needs for people that come after us. How much parking? There are some issues in terms of the sites regarding parking, and whether we build a parking deck or don't build a parking deck. We think we can start without building it, but you may want to build a deck in the future. That's a consideration in the site selection, and Frank will go through that. And what happens to the current building? In one option we use that current building as part of the court complex. In two options we walk away from that building and the county has to decide what they would do with that building in those two scenarios. So the program talking about square footage and how much space. I'll try to explain. Occupiable square feet is what we call usable square feet. Gross square feet on the bottom is the square feet we need to build to capture that usable square feet. Without going into too much detail, in a nutshell the difference is between usable and what you have to build are public corridors, 3 elevators, stairs, lobbies, mechanical spaces, all the stuff that isn't used by the user agencies. So when you talk about square footage, you have to make sure that you're talking apples to apples. Talking about usable square footage, you currently use roughly 120,000 square feet between all the agencies that are currently in the municipal building that are court-related, as well as the court-related agencies that are off-site in the justice center. One of the goals was to consolidate all the court-related agencies into one complex. The current need and what that means, is if you take the current staff, which is roughly 300 people in all those different agencies, and you had a courtroom for every judge, and you had the right square footage for all the workers, you would need roughly 154,000 square feet. And then we did our projections at fifteen years out. The target is more about 210,000 square feet. So that's -- that's the basis at this point, the fifteen-year program for the options that we're going to talk about, and for the cost estimates that we're going to talk about even later. Courtrooms, just to kind of put a little final line to what I just said about what you have and what you need. You currently have about seven courtrooms, and that's not in the municipal building. This building has two real -- two really good courtrooms for the superior court, I guess one courtroom for the civil magistrate, and one probate court. The rest are really sub- standard. They're hearing rooms, they're not courtrooms. So your existing -- you can see superior court is two. They use a bunch of little hearing rooms and that's how the judges try to get their work done. In a modern courthouse, each judge should have access to a courtroom so that they can move their cases through a lot faster in a much more appropriate setting. So what we did is, we did projections. A lot of the growth you see is not growth, but it's because what you currently have is deficient. Seven plus seven or fourteen is deficient, not only in quantity but in size. So we're projecting to go to twenty-three courtrooms, to not use small hearing rooms for the judges to do their business. And I think right now Frank will then take you through the various scenarios. MR. GREENE: Thanks, Rob. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how this program translates into design scenarios for the different sites. First of all, context. This is a view from Broad Street, looking towards where the municipal building is today. But once upon a time there was a beautiful old courthouse there behind the signer's monument. Sorry about the old photographs. I was much younger and hard to hold the camera steady. Beautiful old courthouse that had -- it was simple, it was very direct. It was a really important landmark in the city, a building that was enhanced by its setting, being placed at the center of the site, surrounded by a park, which was really one way of signifying that the building itself was important and worthy of respect. The present municipal building is built directly in front of where that building was. After it was constructed, this building was demolished. It's interesting that the back side of the building -- this is the side of the building that faces the academy. Very similar to the front side, just slight differences. There's a little bit different push-pull at the front entrance, but there's really -- the building was designed to see -- be seen on all four sides and entered both from Telfair and from Greene Street. It had this beautiful fence that surrounded it. It really made the park setting of the courthouse very special and separate from the street. It just – it wasn't a building that was built right to the sidewalk. The present condition of the site is that the municipal building is there, and essentially a sea of parking. There's over 300 parking spaces on the site and it sits across from the beautiful Medical College, the academy, and then I guess it's the -- the art institute is on the other corner. This is a little bit of context setting. Now I need to add one more gadget. This is the Reynolds Street site, this is the present municipal building site where the courthouse is today, and this is the May Park site. Those are the three sites that we've studied for purposes of this presentation today. And what this -- this map that it's over is the Augusta 2000 master plan. 4 Again, the three sites. Each of them in relationship to the central business district, the Reynolds Street and municipal building site's obviously much closer to the municipal -- the center of business where the attorneys have their offices, where the people go to lunch, et cetera, et cetera, than the May Park site, which is more remote. This diagram shows the uses that surround each of the sites. Again, the central business district being sort of almost in between the Reynolds site and the municipal building site. It's very interesting that the Monument Street, that still has the signer's monument. The old fountain, I believe that was in the center of Broad Street, is long gone, I think. But there's this really important view of the existing municipal building, but then potentially back to Reynolds Street from the municipal building if Reynolds Street were used for this project. There are a number of historic structures in the vicinity of both of these buildings. The civic center, the sort of industrial, the jail slash sheriff's law enforcement center, a residential area. I believe this is called Olde Town over here. Some mixed commercial on this side of the Reynolds Street site. And then most particularly around Reynolds Street site, the building that we're in today, the Augusta Museum, beautiful old St. Paul's Church immediately across Sixth Street, the marina, and then the levee slash riverwalk that really is terminated halfway across the levee at the Reynolds Street site. It's actually interrupted by the railroad tracks and bridge, but then picks up again and carries through sort of as an entrance to the levee -- I'm sorry, an entrance to the marina. We think there's a real opportunity there in looking at the development of this Reynolds Street site. One thing that's really wonderful -- you know, some -- I come from New York City where trees struggle to find -- you know, come out of cracks in the sidewalk. To come to Augusta and see the beautiful character, particularly of Greene Street, but also of Broad Street, and the wonderful park-like settings of the institutional buildings across from the existing municipal building, and how beautiful the riverwalk is, and the landscaping along the riverwalk. It says to me that you have just wonderful resource here, that really sets the character of the place and makes this a very beautiful place to live and to do business. That's part of why I love coming here. It even includes things like the old Magnolia cemetery and the May Park playground. These greens places, whether they're boulevards, whether they're actual parks, or buildings that have park-like settings around them, are really an important balance to the large paved areas that are mostly parking, that have become -- they're a fact of life in cities nowadays. We all love our cars and they need a home and a place to go. But keeping as much greenery on sites, particularly large sites like this project, is going to require – it will require hundreds of cars. It's important to keep the balance of -- always tilted, I think, in the favor of green. No pun intended. So now I'm going to go through the individual sites and show you some concepts for the sites. First the municipal building site. The municipal building site is of the three sites the most complicated to develop because it's got the existing building on it, has a number of other buildings on it. For purposes of this study, we've considered the entire block between Fifth and Sixth Street. So there's a beautiful old white house here that apparently could be sold and moved, a number of other smaller one story office buildings that presumably would be demolished. The historic synagogue -- for purposes of this study, we've shown -- we've not shown the buildings that are attached to it to remain. That might be something that you want to consider or not consider. But certainly this building which exists in a really beautiful sort of dialogue with these other institutional buildings across the street, should in any case be retained. But we haven't shown or priced out trying to put the program into it, or trying to make it work as part of the courthouse. That's sort of a question to be resolved at a later date. So what we're showing here is the existing building renovated, a new lobby entrance off of Greene Street, a new building along Telfair that essentially parallels the municipal building, and then the option of a parking deck. This is what you're going to see in all these scenes. We've shown a 5 multi-level parking deck only as an option, and in the cost figures we get to at the end of this presentation, the parking deck is not included. For all of these -- we think that the parking deck should be planned for. It's something that you might do sooner. You probably would do later as part of some expansion scheme. We'll have to see how that works out. But it -- just warning you, it's on all these schemes. We've indicated that as optional. But we believe that any of these sites or any of these schemes can work with just surface parking. What that obviously means on the municipal building site is that any opportunities to create a lot of green space will become all paved. The present condition of the municipal building site, that has essentially all parking on it, except for the new area, will continue in order to get all the parking on site at grade. Here's another option for the same site, which is to place the new building along Sixth Street, to make sort of an L shaped building, rather than two parallel building blocks like the previous scheme showed, and then create all the parking all the way on the Fifth Street end of the site. The idea here that's driving us really is to create something similar to what the old courthouse had, is really a park-like setting for the complex, where you can create an entrance somewhere in this zone, or some combination of the existing entrance with a new entrance. But more importantly, create a courthouse square that sets this -- these buildings in relationship to the park-like setting of the institutional buildings across the street. Needless to say, this would become mostly paved in the first -- unless you build a parking deck. And a third scheme for this site would be to put the new building in the area of the existing buildings that would be removed, place the parking deck along Telfair, and create essentially a lobby that links the new building and the municipal building together. Sort of a terrifying thought, actually, putting a giant parking deck across the street from these beautiful old buildings along Telfair. Now for the Reynolds Street site. The Reynolds Street site is very similar in size to the municipal building site, within a tenth of an acre difference. But one of the great opportunities is, there's no existing buildings on this site, other than the antique mall, that you have to design around. It's much more of a fun site, and simpler site to develop that way. These are a couple of options here. Basically showing the new courthouse parallel to Reynolds, with its entrance on the corner of Reynolds and Sixth, sort of tying in with the entrance of the Augusta Museum, the entrance to St. Paul's here. This is really kind of a major public corner of the site. Placing between the new building and the levee, the parking. Again, showing the multi-story parking deck, but it could be all surface parking. And reserving the Fifth Street side of the site for potential development, high-rise residential, mixed use residential and commercial. We do not need to cover this entire site with our building. We think there's a great opportunity here to create sort of a courthouse square address, if you will, that would make a parcel that's left over on the site that much more attractive to a future developer. In fact, what we thought as -- here's a cross section through that site, showing the river, the marina, the levee, the Reynolds Street site, and I guess we're somewhere on the second floor of this building right here. Showing an eight story courthouse along Reynolds, a landscape plaza on top of a two to three level parking deck, and then future development either on top of that plaza, in combination with the landscaping, and then possibly some sort of high rise building beyond that could be apartments or could be commercial. The thought is, and again, the price of this landscape plaza and parking deck is not in the cost estimates that we're going to be showing you in a minute. But we think that on this site, on the Reynolds site, the opportunity exists for that future developer to build that parking and that deck as part of that project, and we think that's a very exciting opportunity that an urban benefit could be created. In fact, the riverwalk sort of -- at that end sort of just -- what's the right word? Just sort of peters out. I went jogging along there this morning. It's beautiful in the morning. There's all these little incidents, very different incidents that happen along the riverwalk. But at that end it just sort 6 of -- there's no terminus. There's nothing that -- you know, that anchors, or that provides sort of definition of that end. So there's a wonderful opportunity to create a plaza that could be a courthouse square at that end. Slight variation on this previous scheme that you saw that calls for keeping the antique mall. It's an old building. I don't know the difference between old and historic exactly, particularly in a place like Augusta that has so much history. But when I see an old building I wonder if there's a way to use it, and we think that it's quite likely that the antique mall could become a first floor clerk's department for the courthouse. Just one -- it's about the right size, having one big giant floor plate for all the clerk's departments to be together, for the public to come in right off the street level, transact their business, and then leave without getting on elevators or stairs, and that sort of thing. Might be something that works functionally very well for the courts, but might as well be a great contribution to keeping historic buildings in Augusta. So essentially what this does is, makes the building -- makes the new building one story lower, because essentially one floor of this building would end up in the old antique mall. And then finally the May Park site. May Park site is, again, directly adjacent to the county law enforcement center. Is that what they call it? The jail, the sheriff's department. It's sandwiched between the law enforcement center and Magnolia Cemetery, between, I guess, the Olde Town residential neighborhood here and then a little bit more residential, and then quickly turning into mixed commercial, separated from the central business district by Gordon Highway and by sort of a mixed district. It seems like, in itself, that May Park is a great community resource. Ballfields, tennis courts, firehouse, elderly center. So in order to even begin thinking about development of the May Park site, all this -- all or most – probably all of those facilities would have to be recreated somewhere. Land would have to be procured, they would have to be designed, they'd have to be constructed. So the May Park site inherently has built-in lag before you could even start building the courthouse, because that -- those replacement facilities would have to exist before the courthouse construction could start. Reynolds Street site could start immediately, as soon as the architects can draw it up. The municipal building site, there would again be a lag because the properties that are required for additional parking would have to be acquired, would have to be demolished and/or removed. So the one site that does have immediate activity, immediate progress, is the Reynolds Street site. The May Park site is almost twice as large as the other two sites, so it -- the optional parking deck is really not necessary. The one benefit of building a parking deck on this site, if you were to do it, is that you could reserve much more of the site for green space. In fact, the numbers that we're talking about by the way, in the initial phase one, and what we put in the cost estimate, is approximately 420 cars. What you have on the municipal building site now is approximately 324 or something like that, cars. So it's an incremental increase from what you have. What we planned for, and what these parking decks can accommodate, is somewhere around 750 cars, because we think that's the ultimate build-out. That the building itself might expand, and that twenty years out that might be really a prudent planning horizon. So that's what we planned for. If you filled the May Park site with parking, you would get 750 cars on it. Scary thought, but it could be done. So after having done these, Rob said, okay, are any of these any good. So Rob went into some pros and cons. MR. FISCH: Well, I think they're all viable, and I do want -- you know, we've talked of each. Let's kind of compare them quickly. First in terms of their benefits, their, as Frank said, pros and cons, and then we'll compare them in terms of cost. The municipal building site, I guess as you can see our con list is longer than our pro list. There are some advantages to this. This is the historic location of the courthouse. The old building, as Frank showed you, from day one -- not 7 day one, but certainly from the nineteenth century, maybe even from the eighteenth century, this was the location of the courts and the government center. Utilizing the existing building we think is a pro. It's actually a pro and it's a con. This creates a viable use for that building. The other options require you to find a use for that building. And in terms of land uses, the courthouse square Frank mentioned, I don't even know if I put that on the pro, because unless you do the deck you really don't get the courthouse square. And it is convenient to the central business district. The cons are -- and I want to talk a little bit about this first one. The municipal building isn't flexible. What does that mean? The current building has a lot of masonry block walls. It's very -- it's got small floor plates on the upper floors. The masonry construction on the interior makes it very hard to alter the layout. As we said, it doesn't meet security requirements in terms of the circulation patterns, elevators, stairs, corridors. We can work with that building and make it more viable as an office building. To be honest, it pretty much is an office building that had originally two major courtrooms in it, and it's best used as an office building. So in this option, when we use the municipal building as part of the solution, the new building is where the courtrooms, the chambers, and a lot of the court support, the prisoner holding, circulation, all of that happens in the new building. The existing building is -- could be DA, solicitor, some agencies that don't have those kind of demanding functional requirements. But still you need to put a lot of money into that building. You've got to get that building up to code. You want to make that building again more space efficient. You've got to create a good environment for the staff that work in that building. The parking structure out of scale. Well, that's true in a lot of sites, but in this site in particular you can't hide it. You can hide it in the Reynolds Street site. Rail traffic is an issue here, and both Reynolds Street. But depending on which option you go and how much site you take, you may be right up against that railroad track, which is certainly undesirable. This project will take longer because it's phased. Because you've got to build the new building, move people out, go back, back renovate the old building. More time is more money. And as you'll see, this ends up being the most expensive option, and I'll tell you why when I get to the costs. The -- and then I talked about functional efficiency. Let me move on to some of the others. I don't want to belabor it. But the Reynolds Street site -- there's a lot of good points about the best use for this site. Some say that the highest and best use for this site is mixed use, or residential or commercial. That's certainly a very important use for this site. We've tried to accommodate it. At the same time, there's nothing wrong with putting a courthouse on a prominent site. Traditionally, courthouses have been on prominent sites. Your current site was prominent when Greene Street was made as a wonderful boulevard. The courthouse should be on a prominent site. You're spending a lot of money. You want this building to help improve the image and vision of future Augusta, so you want to see this building. But yes, it does displace the possibility of some mixed use, commercial, residential future development. Compatible with adjacent uses? Absolutely. You've got -- and I'm not going to go through it point by point. But this building certainly is with the building we're in right now, the church across the street. There's a lot of institutional uses around here. I talked about the parking can be hidden. Frank talked about this being an address and helping to create a new address. And there is the possibility -- we -- you know, we're not saying count on it, but if you do have a developer build on this site and use part of that site, you just sell it or lease it to that developer, they might be able to build you the parking structure. So the future deck that we're talking about on the Reynolds Street option might be able to be created for Augusta by a private developer. And potential catalyst for lower Broad Street development. Again, you know, we want this building to be a catalyst for the neighborhood that it's in, and we think this site will be a catalyst for this in the 8 neighborhood, and not only help anchor the Riverwalk, but also help anchor Broad Street and the commercial district on one end. The con I've talked about, integration with mixed uses. We want to try to accommodate it. It's a little bit more complicated. It can be done. The railroad still goes past our site. We would try to mitigate that to the degree that we can pull the building back from it. Then the May Park site. The biggest pro of this site is it's big. That's really the main advantage of this site. All surface parking is possible. That is a pro in terms of the functionality of making this site work. It may not be a pro in terms of the appearance of the neighborhood. It will be very visible. It's easy to get to from the highway, and we talked about site control. You can -- you have access to that site. You can develop that site. The cons. The surface parking or structure parking, however you do it, is very visible in this community. In fact, I'll just jump to the biggest con, the obvious con. You're losing this public amenity. You're losing the park. You're losing the community center. You've got to build this somewhere else. This is the cost impact of this option. That makes this option also more expensive than the Reynolds Street option because I guess an estimate from the county was roughly six and a half million dollars to actually replace all the facilities that are there, find a new site, and do it. It could also be a time factor. If you don't want to lose the community facilities for a year or two while you're building the new building, then you need to wait until you've relocated this before you start your new building. So that could be a delay to the project. But -- and the other real important one Frank pointed to, but I'm going to emphasize it again. Is this is not in the commercial business district. This is not near the attorney's offices. This is not near restaurants. People go out to lunch, going to get in their car. At that point they're going to go anywhere. They're not necessarily going to go to Broad Street. We just don't see this being a commer -- a catalyst for commercial development in Augusta. So the numbers. Last, but certainly not least, but I'll get into it. It's very important to understand all the different pieces that make up the cost of a project. Originally a number was given to us of twenty million roughly for the new building. That, as I understand, was not necessarily based on any real study. It was kind of a number that -- I think originally you were talking forty, now it's cut back to twenty. We were told twenty at the beginning. It did not square with the program of need. It did not square with the cost of courthouse construction today, and it did not include all the other costs that go along with the project. Fine. You have the bricks and mortar and that's what we call construction. The second line, fifty-two million dollars, that's just the bricks and mortar to build the building. There are a lot of other costs that you do have to consider, and you need to budget for them somehow and we wanted to make sure when we did the cost estimates that we didn't forget anything. We'd rather have -- we want to make sure everything's in there, because nobody wants to go back to the county commissioners and say we don't have enough money; oops, we forgot something. So we put it in there. That's what the contingencies are for, as well. The miscellaneous, the biggest chunk of that is fixtures, furniture, and equipment. You've got AV, telephone, data, all of that stuff has to be in there. That's not part of the bricks and mortar numbers. And in this particular option, one of the reasons why the construction cost is what it is, is we're carrying now roughly twenty million dollars for replacement for the county agencies. When we take over this building as a courthouse, the existing building, or as part of the court solution, the agencies -- the non-court agencies need a place to go. I know the county was considering doing some other agency building anyway. That building would then definitely need to be done now, or on this time frame, and for the agencies that are in this building. In a sense, it's a cost to the county in order to make this project happen. That's what gets us up to eighty-six million dollars. We go to Reynolds Street, that's the biggest chunk, and that's the biggest difference between Reynolds Street and the municipal building cost. The construction cost you can see here is -- I guess it's fifty-seven 9 million, here it's fifty-two. It's actually a little higher. You're getting a lot more building when you build this. You're building a lot more -- you're building 300,000 square feet of new building. You still have the old municipal building if you want to reuse it for something. The other option, you're building roughly 185,000 square feet of new construction, and 115,000 was the existing building renovate, to get your 300,000 square foot of total program need, which is what we estimated at fifteen-year need. So here you're getting more building for the money. You're not getting your administrative building here, but you don't need to do that. You can take the court agencies off the municipal building site, go to Reynolds Street, and leave the agencies that are there for now, or you can decide at some future point to do something else with that building. But they're not on a critical path, the non-court agencies, in this option. And again, the construction costs of the site. We've got to purchase the site and get the site ready. The -- most of the numbers are to build 300,000 square feet of construction. And then the May Park site, we have similar numbers there as well. The site costs go up because you've now got to relocate, and I said roughly six and a half million dollars to relocate the park that you have there. That makes this option more expensive than the Reynolds Street option. So let's compare them. And that twenty-four million, that big number, is -- includes that twenty million dollars in municipal building. So that twenty-four million there is what I was talking about, the biggest cost of the displacement of county agencies in order to reuse that -- the current building for the courthouse. And the May Park site, that includes the relocation costs for the park. So these are where two big numbers happen in these two options that doesn't happen in the Reynolds Street option. The construction is kind of similar. This fifty- two million is a mixture of new construction and renovation. The renovation might save you a little money, but it's not that much cheaper per square foot to renovate the existing building, which is fifty-five years old, and presumably has asbestos, has antiquated mechanical systems, and needs significant changes to the layout. The Reynolds Street is a clean, new building, as is the May Park option. The fees and contingencies are basically similar, comparable. And miscellaneous, which again was the FF -- fixtures, furniture, equipment, AV, technology. That all is pretty much constant, too. So you can kind of see in the end of the day we're talking total project cost, not construction, but project cost, in the range of eighty-six million for the municipal building site, seventy million for Reynolds Street, and seventy-eight million for the May Park. I believe we're done. So I'll put this back up on the screen, and I guess we're ready to take your questions. MR. KUHLKE: When you stand up to ask the question, I guess we need to get a mike to you. I'd like for you to identify who you are. We have a court reporter. We'll be taking these questions. They'll try to answer them. If they can't, we'll get the answer back to you. And also, following this meeting what I'd like to ask the commissioners or any of the judges, that if you have questions that come up, I would like for you to direct those questions to Ms. Bonner, who will in turn pass them on to the architects for a written response to your question. And also ask you, Ms. Bonner, that once the transcript is available, to issue to all the commissioners a copy of the questions and answers that have been asked today, and future questions also. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Bill, would you like to pass those handouts out now or after? MR. KUHLKE: We have handouts that pretty much shows you everything that was on the screen. So we'll take questions now, and then pass the handouts out. 10 MR. BRIDGES: My name is Ulmer Bridges. I'm a city commissioner. I noticed you had as a negative on the May Park that -- the fact you were putting it close to the jail. Would not that be a positive, the fact that you're not transporting prisoners the great distance? MR. GREENE: I guess the reason -- I'm trying not to do this. The proximity of courthouse to the jail -- by the way, we're an architectural firm that specializes in design of courthouses. We deal with courthouses all over the country. For a while there, there was a real trend towards designing justice centers; sheriff's department, jail, courthouse all as one -- in one facility. Obviously economy is involved -- you could move prisoners right through tunnels or bridges or whatever between the jail and the courthouse. Efficiency comes at a particular cost, and one thing that a lot of people care about from the court side, is the public perception that the judiciary is not, in fact, an arm of the law enforcement part of government. But the judiciary is, in fact, a separate and equal branch of government that is impartial, that's not just the front door to the jail. That you go to the courthouse and you get a fair trial and you can walk out of there. You don't necessarily go to jail because you might be found not guilty. So as soon as this sort of public perception, that we're very much in favor of actually. We love the way the old courthouse sat in the middle of this square, in the middle of Augusta. It's important that the courthouse be that kind of a landmark and not an adjunct to the jail. Secondly though -- so aside from all that philosophical and all that stuff, the -- functionally, once you put those prisoners in a vehicle, it doesn't really matter how far you're driving them. That's why a lot of times you'll see courthouses downtown, the jail out in the country somewhere, where you can build a two story building on twenty-five acres. The big cost for prisoner transport, the big inconvenience from the jail side, getting them all loaded into the vans and off-loaded from the vans, getting them on the right vehicle, et cetera, et cetera. So if the courthouse could be located such that there's a tunnel or a bridge between the courthouse and the jail, absolutely. You can make a case that there's a big cost savings. But I think the analysis that we've seen is that once they're on vehicles, the extra driving, you know, five, ten minutes from the jail site to Reynolds or to the municipal building is really not any different than just going across the street. Does that answer your question? MR. CHEEK: Andy Cheek, commissioner of district six. Several questions. I'm looking at the trending and we're showing through the fifteen-year estimate 90,000 square feet of, quote, unusable space. What value engineering was done to reduce that amount of space, and typically is that mechanical space, or what is that being used for? You want all of them at one time or we'll take them – MR. GREENE: That's kind of a grossing factor. Why don't we go through them one by one. It's not -- it's not current usable space. MR. FISCH: Yeah, let me -- that's why we have this still on. It's all the way at the beginning, if I can do this. And that's your 90,000 you're talking about. The difference between here and to ten and 300. We used what we call a grossing factor of roughly forty-three percent mark-up, and there's a lot of -- you know, there's a lot of discussion on what that grossing factor should be. Courthouses are inherently inefficient buildings because they have three patterns of circulation, they have three separate sets of elevators, public, staff and prisoner. Modern courthouses are not necessarily the old courthouses, the way they used to be built. And different entries, big lobbies with security and space for queuing up to go through security. So to a lot of 11 people it looks like, right, that's a big waste of space. You need that space to build a courthouse. You just do. When you add up all those numbers, mechanical space at ten percent, wall thickness alone at five percent, you're up to fifteen percent. And then when you put in the corridors, the elevators, the stairs, you're up to your forty to forty-five percent range. So we believe strongly in that number, and we believe that you need that square feet to make this work. MR. GREENE: And to answer the other part of your question, we -- we actually started out with a lesser efficiency recommendation, and the value engineering that you were referring to did occur, and the wisdom of the group is that we should tighten up the building because -- to reduce costs, essentially. But in terms of courts precedents across the country, this ratio of usable space to total building gross square footage, is right at the very limit of what's going to work. You don't want the public corridors to be too narrow and crowded, and that's essentially what will come out in the final analysis. MR. FISCH: Public waiting areas, that kind of thing. MR. CHEEK: You know, the concern is -- and I'll go to the Reynolds Street site, is that that's typlimatic of problems in Augusta. We've got a site we're choosing to build a facility for nearly three times the budgeted amount next to a bridge that we can't afford to repair, that we may close for vehicular traffic. So you understand the pressure we're under. What, if any, calculations were used for the new Columbia County center and its reduction of pressure on the Augusta Judicial Center, as far as courtroom space? MR. FISCH: Columbia County built a new building, but the -- the way the courts do business, the court is currently eight superior court judges here. Those judges, as far as I know, have not gone anywhere on their caseload. It still remains here, even though Columbia County has built. Some of the -- and maybe some of the users here can correct me, I'm not sure. I think the DA and some of the other agencies actually service Columbia County from Augusta. So it's -- maybe the reverse question is more, you know, by building this building will it relieve some of the pressure maybe on Columbia County. I don't know. But from users we did not get any indication -- and since Columbia County's already up and running, and we're working off of current staffing and current needs, unlike the 1998 program that was done by a previous consultant, that any change that might have happened in Columbia County, if there was, should have already been taken into account in the current staffing in Augusta. I don't know if that's – MR. CHEEK: Well, that quite -- it didn't quite answer my question. I guess my concern is that we had -- I believe we had seventeen, or however number of courtrooms listed in the new facility. Does the new facility in Columbia County offset or decrease that need in our current design? Do we have -- I know y'all did the architectural stuff. Was there anything done to look at scheduling to improve efficiency within the current system that we have? I guess the next question is, what is cost per construction site for the parking decks? Will that information be provided to us? The plaza on the Reynolds Street was particularly attractive. MR. FISCH: You know, I -- just to put a final line on the first -- getting back to the first question that you just elaborated on, we think -- and we've been under the impression by talking to a lot of the users that by building these new courtrooms which they currently don't have, that 12 they're going to increase the ability to process cases faster. I know certainly talking to the DA and several of the other agencies, they expect their staffing to go up based on that ability to move cases. So in a sense the log jam of cases has created the appearance of great -- better staffing efficiency than you really have, because you're not processing cases. You need more people and you need more space, and then you'll get the cases processed faster. I'm sorry. The second question? MR. GREENE: We -- there's a handout of both the power point presentation, as well as the detail on the cost estimates. It's not showing the parking deck numbers in it right now. But we can get you those numbers. I guess we can get them to you through Bill, if you'd like to know what that number is. We did the estimate, we just didn't include it for today's presentation. MR. CHEEK: On the municipal building site, twenty-four million dollars slated for relocation of existing offices, is there line item information on what that includes? Does that include the new facility, to relocate those people, or just gutting the building and redoing it? MR. GREENE: Kind of all of the above. You'll see that in the detail that we passed out. Those line items are in there. MR. CHEEK: That information does tend to kind of skew it in favor of the Reynolds Street site. That's why I was asking. And lastly, just a statement. We -- we are about to go back to the people of this city and ask to take the equivalent of three and a half years of their sales tax to put into this building. Have we done everything we can to bring this back down towards the twenty million dollar figure, and is this the very best we can do with the recommendation from you guys? Should we go back and look at it anymore, or is this it? MR. FISCH: I'll take a shot at that. I – MR. CHEEK: The short answer is yes. MR. FISCH: I think we've -- yeah, the short answer is yes, we think we've done all we can at this point in time. As we usually do at the beginning of a project, we do have some contingency in there, which is normal, which may or may not be spent. There are still unknowns. Until you work through the design process, those things have to flush themselves out. We think we're -- where it used to be, we're certainly -- it's nowhere near a Taj Mahal. We're looking at a basic sound courthouse, based on our previous cost positive study. So there's just not -- MR. GREENE: And the other thing is, a courthouse is a fifty to 100 year building. It's -- you're not going to do this every ten years. The last courthouse was built fifty-five years ago, and the county courthouse before that maybe 100 years before that. So it's -- that's the time horizon that you look at. The building has got to be able to stand up for that time period as well, so it's got to be solidly constructed. MR. CHEEK: Last question, and I get asked this often. We ask all of our departments and new constructions to live within the budgeted amount. Why should this building be any different, and has there been any consideration into developing it in phases over time? 13 MR. GREENE: Well, we actually have a plan -- what these footprints show is including the expansion footprint. So we've designed a building that could be built as phase one, with another phase two increment that could happen at any time period. I think it's very important to plan for future expansion. The other thing that -- the option to that, which we considered and rejected, is to build a building that's much bigger than what you really are going to need when you move in, and you've got space that you're not really using. So we've -- we've squeezed it down to a prudent horizon of growth within the existing building. But that's only leaving -- reserving space on the site for one more chunk of expansion. MR. CHEEK: Thank you. MR. WILLIAMS: My name is Marion Williams. I'm commission, district two here in Augusta, and I've got a couple questions. I've also got a map of another site I'd like to offer, too, if I get an opportunity to share with everybody that's here, just to put it on the table so we can look at it. But my first question is, when we look at objective site, looked at projection for Augusta, you said this building should last 100 years. Well, we're talking about building a building with seven floors. If this building should last 100 years, and we're only thinking about seven floors, why aren't we figuring in a building of some magnitude that would have more than seven floors so potential growth would be there, you know, for -- you know, for further use, whether it be court facilities or other facilities? We mentioned several things. One thing was about a courthouse, and then we mentioned about the existing building being office space. Why are we not including office space, not just for the judges or for the judicial system, but for office space that we may be able to renovate, to rent for people, whether it be attorneys, whether it be anyone that want to do that? Has everything been thought about in that respect? You know, you did say seven floors. Has that been thought about at all? MR. GREENE: Well, we -- we tried -- and I guess again the short answer is yes. But what we've done is tried to come up with a building that meets the need, and -- with a little bit of elbow room for short-term, ten year, fifteen year growth, but not -- the building not be any bigger than it has to be so that the cost can be kept down. If we were to build a larger building, it's going to cost more. We certainly could do that on this site. There's room on the site. But we just weren't charged with that as part of our design program. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The construction for addditional floors. MR. WILLIAMS: Has any thought been put into the -- the new system where the judges will use a camera-type situation, where -- and I guess the finance part, I guess is what I'm asking. Has that been included in this cost, where the camera system is being used as well? You know, we mentioned about fiber with telephones and all the other things, so I'm asking the question about the camera system, as far as that being used for courthouse, to where the judge is in one room and the - - you know, the people that's subpoenaed in another, which may even save us, you know, in a lot of ways, too. That's all the questions I have. But Bill, at the opportune time I would like to just show this other site and get some feedback from the people. MR. GREENE: Should I respond to the technology question? 14 MR KUHLKE: Yes, go ahead. MR. GREENE: There's -- the building will be fully wired for technologies that we can know about today. Who knows what thing's going to be possible in ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. But the use of video conferencing for judicial proceedings is very useful. Lots of jurisdictions are using it. But it has limited applications. You can't have a trial like that, for instance, because we have the right to confront our accuser at a criminal trial. Even arraignments. In some cases arraignments are able to be done over video conferences. In many places they're not able to be done. It depends on local preferences and customs. Many of the attorneys, for instance, don't want to be involved in video conferencing for arraignments. What most places have found useful is video links for remote testimony in a civil trial. Let's say someone's overseas and they're going to -- they need to tes -- it can be done. Or for motions, kind of nuisance petitions by prisoners, for instance, from the jail, to save transport. So it definitely will be part of the new building. But I don't think -- I don't think it changes the number of courtrooms that you need, for instance, or whatever. What it can save on is transport costs. That's where you can save. MR. KUHLKE: Bill Kuhlke. I wanted to answer. Marion, we did -- we went to Atlanta last week to sort of preview what was going to be presented today, and Jim Wall and I showed the site that you had shown to us. The reason we hadn't done anything on that site is two reasons. Number one is the federal bankruptcy court is interested in part of that site. The other reason was, we were going to have to deal with the canal and the railroad going through that site. Very frankly, we -- we didn't have the time to get into all the details on that site before we had our meeting today. But we -- I have the plat that you gave to me and we are -- we're terribly concerned that there's some environmental problems there. MR. WILLIAMS: I guess we're kind of talking over everybody's head who have not seen the site, and I've got some stuff that had acreage to look at over on Walker Street, from Ninth Street over to Eleventh Street, that area in there. The contamination, Bill, I had someone to check into that. Sonny Reese was -- was fortunate enough to go and check in some things and find out that for commercial use -- for any residence we could not use that site. But that is a area that we can use, even with the train that's there. We can build an overpass for the train to come through. That's two blocks long. It's from Walker over to Fenwick, and from Telfair over to Ninth Street. There's nothing in that area. We'll still be downtown. We'll still be right at the courthouse that we presently use. We'll still be about two blocks more from the jail. If anyone interested in looking at that, I do have some -- some sites on it that have been drawn up. I think we need to look at it and just at least consider it, and see what it is. I mean, I don't know anything about architect work. I don't know anything about any of this. I'm just trying to look out for where is a good location that would still be downtown. When I mentioned about building a building, we ought to build a building at least sixteen to twenty stories, and you say, why do that. We shouldn't -- we shouldn't finish it. We ought to build what we need, but have the capacity to go in there and renovate that as we need it. When judges or lawyers or anyone else need those facilities, we've got it there to do it. But if anyone is interested in looking at that, I have the plans and I'll be more than happy to share the little information I got and maybe we can, you know, go from there, Bill. MR. KUHLKE: Andy, you brought up the point about staying in budget and so forth. I think the one point that I want to make is that we had twenty million dollars in this phase of the 15 sales tax. That number was plugged in for a judicial center. It was plugged in and we didn't have an architect on board. We had not done any analysis of what we needed. So, you know, while we can call it a budget, we really, really didn't have any numbers to work with. And initially that was forty million and it was cut, and it was not cut by Randy Oliver, I understand. It was cut by the previous sales tax committee. MR. CHEEK: Just so everybody's on -- you know, on board with what I've heard from the public, is this is a very -- to take three years of sales tax to fund this facility is a very unpopular option and may be a killer to our sales tax, and that's where my concerns are. We have, like I said, the bridge, the roads, infrastructure, libraries, and everything else that would have to be perhaps displaced unless we found an alternative funding source for this, for this project, and that is the concern I'm hearing from nearly 100 percent of the citizens that I've talked to. MR. KUHLKE: Anybody else? Come over there so everybody can see you. Come on down so everyone can see you. MS. WALKER: My name's Janelle Walker. I'm the senior church warden at St. Paul's Church. This is just a question I have because we're right here. When you talk about, to begin with, that we're not going to have a parking deck, but eventually that would be good. Right now you've got 300 spaces that you use. Where would the 300 places be before the parking deck's built, number one? And are you talking about once you have a parking deck, just using Sixth Street to accommodate all the cars? MR. GREENE: In all honesty, we have not designed it, so -- but I can speculate for you. But the first -- the first question is kind of the easiest one to answer. If we don't build a parking deck, the parking would then go in that light green area there, which is the footprint of the future parking deck, just at grade. What we like about that is that it's hidden from the street by the building wall, and also hidden, I guess, from the riverfront by the levee itself, and to a certain extent from your side by the sloping walk that goes up and that sort of thing. But we do have in the budget for the first phase that it's not just a sea of asphalt. That it's an intensive -- it's as landscaped as you can make a parking lot and still get a decent count of cars. So it would have decent paving, would have trees and curbs and that sort of thing. So it would have to be an attractive parking space. MS. WALKER: But you're still talking about one entrance on Sixth Street to accommodate everybody? MR. GREENE: I don't know. I think that there's -- it makes a lot of sense to have two entrances front and back, off of Fifth and off of Sixth. Fifth is a little tricky because it ramps up to the bridge, so you would have to -- there's lots of options. It would be very prudent. Actually, if you think about long term, about a development site in that grey area for some sort of -- then you clearly are talking about an entrance off of Fifth Street. So we would probably build that, I imagine in the first phase, and then ideally have the two of them working together. MS. WALKER: And you think -- I know that when you look at the municipal building now, you've got Telfair and Greene Street to access it. You miss that here. So do you still feel this 16 site is as accessible, or do you anticipate that with the number of people coming in that we would be creating a -- and I'm not sure that we have enough traffic signals or wide enough roads to accommodate Fifth and Sixth and a little bit of Reynolds. MR. GREENE: That would be definitely something we need to look into. We have not done a traffic study at this point, so -- MR. MAYS: Ladies and gentlemen, and ladies, Willie Mays, super district commissioner. I kind of -- I've got some questions really about all three of the sites. I probably would rather yield, since this quite frankly is going to be concerning our judiciary, and the number of operatives that are going to go in there, they may possibly answer some of the questions that I might have. Rather than being redundant, Mr. Chairman, I think I really would like to yield to them. But I do have some questions, and before I -- before I yield the mike, just to follow-up on the young lady's question that was just asked, since that's on there, and I'm not -- I'm not at this point -- quite frankly, I've tried to keep an open mind on this. But just while we're on this point, and you've sung such great praises on this site, but I think you really need to appoint -- once the judges are finished, answer -- and I know you've got some talented folk over there, some I've worked with for years, some I know their reputation and this, and I know you -- y'all are talented to know how to put a building in sideways in between two skyscrapers and make it work. So, I mean, I know that can be done. But I think if you've got a street here almost that you consider half a street, because you've got a railroad track running up the middle of it that's not going anywhere, and you're talking about a historic building that you're going to save that's out there, and I think that's where her question is leading. And you've got a slope coming off of a bridge, from one state coming into this one, which limits your access as to how you can even cut a road on Fifth Street, then I just want to put a asterisk there to come back in, just from the standpoint of how you're going to get it, because you can put all the plazas, you can put everything you want in there, but people have still got to get in there. Now, unless you're going to physically pick the historical building up and actually turn it in a different direction so that you can get access from the middle of Reynolds Street between Fifth and Sixth, then I'm really trying to figure out how in the dickens you're going to get in off Sixth Street or Fifth Street, and I'll leave that there on that particular one. But I've got some points on all three of the sites that I want to ask some questions on, so I'm not picking on that one. But I'm really following up to where she is, because I think it's vital, and I think if you done that much work, and if you know all the figures that it's going to cost, then I'd like to hear a little bit more concrete answer as to how you're going to get in and out of there. MR. KUHLKE: Anybody else with questions? Well, if we don't have any more questions, I think probably what we can do is to hand out the brochures. I'm going to come back to you, but we'll go ahead and give those out. What -- I don't know how many of these we've got, but I know we have one for each commissioner and the judicial folks and the judicial committee. So Jim, everybody on the front row and second row, and then we have the -- Heidi, we're not going to give the press one. If the members of the judicial committee, if you'll hold your hand up, get some for them back there. George, George Kolb. I'm going to get Lena to get a couple of copies for those that are absent. Justin, you got one? Okay. Well, come up here and get one, buddy. And if the press -- how many we got left? Give Heidi one back there. Monty, did you and Ed get one? I think the sales tax fellows need to have one. I need one. That was basically the presentation. This is the cost data that we'll pass out. I would like to make this request, particularly to the media, if 17 you have any specific questions, I would appreciate you directing those questions to me, and I have asked the consultants and so forth to refer you to me also. Mr. Mays, can I turn it over to you now, for some of your questions? MR. MAYS: Yeah. Mr. Chairman, I -- I kind of -- you know, I'm not -- I'm not good at building anything. I always say I'm the worst builder, this and that. First, let me say this publicly. I said this private, I said it some place publicly. Let me thank our chairman of this committee. I'd say we've had a lot of valuable input from Bill Kuhlke. I tease him all the time, he's not going to get a check. Y'all are going to end up getting the money and we're going to work the dickens out of him, his expertise and being there for free. It's a valuable resource to us. The reason why I yielded, quite frankly, is the fact that I don't really have any questions of the judiciary. What I thought, maybe they had some comments, because when this is confined to their professional use, gentlemen, ladies, and I just want to know from the standpoint that -- let's take -- put a blindfold on the site, so there are some particulars, or there's some things to a point that can't go in either one, that will go in another one. Because, you know, we're going to end up making a political decision, yes, on the money, but I would never be one that would want to say put the judiciary in a situation that you're going to be totally handicapped with for the future, and I think that's crazy to do that. But also at the same time, all of us who live in this community, I think we've got to be prudent about what we do build. If you can remember a little bit about it, and the reason why I wanted to open it up to hear some particulars, is the fact that, you know, this meeting, I kind of think some of it, even though it's a couple years getting down the road, I asked for the first meeting to put it together that we held at the boathouse. And the reason why I asked for that meeting at that time was because many members of the judiciary complained that the first thing, and I think justifiably so, and I agreed with you, that a lot of input had not been sought in some cases for it. That was why we got into that meeting, so that we could hear some of those complaints, hear some of those things that you wanted to say, and what we needed to get. I guess it's gotten us down the road. I also, if you can remember, was one of the main advocates that said it needed to be a state of the art facility. We were not going to be able to put something together, reconvert it; that you had to have a new facility from the very beginning. So I'm not standing here as the enemy in any way, but I do want to be able to make a firm decision, an intelligent one, and I think the first one we've got to deal with, and I think our chairman would agree with me, I don't want to see us start backwards twice. We came up with a hypothetical figure, at least some folks did, on how we were going to deal with building the jail before we ended up out on Phinizy Road, and we got some numbers out of a hat per se, and we were off and running. The next thing you know, it was two to three times the cost of it, the estimated deal at fifty-one million dollars. Now, I said from the very beginning when we started talking about this twenty or the forty that we needed to have somebody on board. I'm on record with that. There are some somebodies on board. But I think now that you've gotten to a tune -- let's just say if you're talking about cost alone. If you own, and I hate to use the word wish list, because that looks like loading something to be on it. But I think if you're talking about in excess of sixty million dollars any way you go, if that's what you're going to do, then quite frankly I don't think anybody's really married to anything until you find a funding source as to how you're going to deal with this. Whether you're going to deal with sales tax, whether you're going to deal with some other source of funding and pay it back, I think that's your key issue. Not to appoint, or what's a good site, what's the bad site. If we don't have any money to deal with it, and you're looking at twenty-five to thirty percent going in, unless there's, you know, some magical worker somewhere that's going to get it up, you know. Last time I checked, Houdini was dead, you 18 know. So, we've got to have some money. So now I think we need to seriously talk about that real soon. We can't just keep putting it off and say well, we got twenty set aside. Somewhere we're going to have to make a decision, I think, Mr. Chairman, to get us into that ball park of doing it. But when we talk about these different sites, I mentioned that about the Fifth and the Sixth Street deal here. I want to ask you a couple of questions. Let me just switch where you won't get the idea that I'm picking on this site. Let me pick on another site for just a minute, okay? Let's go to the municipal building. Now, when we left this alone, and a lot -- now, this is what you get when you start, I think, trying to deal with everything without professional folks at the table. But how did we jump from where we were to where we are on those numbers that are there? I mean, because when we left out originally, we said we were going to be confined to that. That's give or take, even if we said okay, fine, we're going to expand it by ten to fifteen more million dollars, we'd still be, gentlemen, under sixty million dollars. Now, how did we get there? Something -- something unforeseen in there? I looked at the twenty-four million dollars, and the site figures is down there. You know, what's the deal there, because these are the kind of questions we've got to answer to folk when we get -- when we get into late night shopping, you know, the folks'll stop you at one a.m. in Walmart and want to know. You think you've missed all of them, but they want to know how you're going to get there. You all are great minds there. Like I said, y'all can put a skyscraper in between two more skyscrapers. I need to hear it, and I need to be asking all the questions. But if I'm going to have to vote on this in the next month or so, or whenever it's going to be, I really want to know, and I invite the judiciary to jump in any time, because quite frankly this is y'all's thing. It's for the people, but you all are the professionals in it. I need to -- you know, ask me about how to design and what I want in a new funeral home, Judge, I could tell you. But I'm going to have to depend on you all to say what you want in a courthouse, how you want it done, and whether we're going to give you something that's bad or good, because I don't want to hand you something that's going to be terrible. But, I mean, I don't think it ought to be all on us to deal with it in the political domain either. I'm trying to be as fair as possible, because I do want to vote on something. JUDGE FLEMING: I'll be glad to attempt to answer your question. Let me come up there. MR. MAYS: I've still got some questions on them other two sites. I'm not going to pick on the Reynolds Street, but I'm going to jump on the other one for a second to be fair. JUDGE FLEMING: I might talk about that also. First off, if you'll remember, Mr. Mays, several years ago we had a space study done for the entire Richmond County. That space study came back and it showed that we needed at least 200,000 square feet for a courthouse, court facility. This is courts alone, now. We're not talking about for administrative offices of the county, we're not talking about sheriff's office, or anything else. We're talking about just for court. All right. So now -- that was done how many years ago? Was it five years ago or four years ago? At least probably that long ago. Well, then when we started this project anew, and at that time somebody said we need at least forty million dollars; right? That's where the forty million came from. $150 a square foot construction, 200,000 square feet, thirty million dollars, ten million dollars for architectural fees, other costs involved in the construction, acquisition of the site, so forth. That's where the -- that's where the forty million came from. Okay. So that was what we were talking about back then. Now, this project has been on hold for those number of years. Another study was done by and through Tom Gunnells, who is the administrative officer of the 19 court for the Tenth District, and he's done a lot of work in courthouses. He did a study. His came up, I believe, with 220,000 square feet was what we needed. This was done two or three years ago also. Now, this project came up again. Now a new space study was done. These gentlemen did the space study. They went and interviewed everyone, they looked around, they looked at the facilities we have, and they said we need 300,000 square feet of floor space. $150 a square foot is their estimated cost for the building, I believe. Is that correct? MR. GREENE: 160. JUDGE FLEMING: 160. Okay. Well, prices have gone up a little bit since we originally estimated 150. So anyway, that's where that figure comes in. Now, the circulation factor that someone -- I believe someone asked about circulation factor. That includes all of your corridors, that includes where your air conditioning's going to be, that includes your little -- the place where you keep your mops and your brooms and so forth, that includes your corridors, that includes your entrance into the facility, and so forth. So there's a big circulation factor involved. Also it includes your walls. You've got to say, well, wait a minute, we've got 300,000 square feet. That's outside dimensions. But we've got walls inside. So that has to be figured in, and I assume they figured that in. I assume they did the job right. I don't know, I haven't checked the figures. But I would think they did plan on walls, and that's part of that forty-three percent that you mentioned; is that correct? MR. GREENE: Yes, sir. JUDGE FLEMING: Okay. So now that's where we are. Now, we should have a courtroom for every judge. This is what's done all over the United States. These gentlemen build courthouses all around over the United States. They'll tell you the same thing. As a matter of fact, someone came by to see me the other day and he said, I can't believe you have two courtrooms for eight judges. He said, I came out of Kansas and up there every judge has a courtroom. So that's what we're talking about for courtrooms. We were hoping the facility would be built, not for judges now. This is not a judges' building. This is a peoples' building. This is your building. This is not for -- this is not for Bill Fleming. It's not for Carlisle Overstreet or any of these other judges, and we don't want it to appear that this is a judges' building. This is a peoples' building. Now, somebody asked about parking. I'll address that a minute. I'm not an architect either, but I've done a little work on this. Normally speaking you can get 150 parking spaces per acre. I think you'll find that's right. However, if you do that you've got nothing but concrete, or you've got nothing but asphalt. If you come in and you put some shrubbery, you put curbs and gutters, you do not get that number. You could actually get that number if you use all of that Reynolds Street site. You could get about 750 parking spaces probably, if you had no shrubbery, no curbs, no gutters, just strictly concrete, and you had the footprint of your building. Now, as the cost. Somebody asked what does it cost for a parking deck. I can tell you that, too, and I'm not an architect. You can count on $10,000 a parking space, up to $15,000 a parking space. So if you're talking 500 parking spaces, $10,000 a parking space, five million dollars. Talking about 750, add that up. You're talking about 15,000 a parking space, then you get more money. Now, I don't know whether I've addressed all your questions. Now, let's talk about site for a minute. I've been laboring under the impression that county commission said the site should be downtown Augusta. Now, is that incorrect? I'll ask -- is that right, Mr. Mays? 20 MR. MAYS: I guess they have amnesia, Judge. I'm having to answer and ask this morning. That has been the primary -- I'll put it this way, I'll answer for this commissioner. I have been supportive of a downtown site from the very beginning, in the downtown area. JUDGE FLEMING: All right. Now -- MR. MAYS: Let me finish answering, if I might. That does not speak for everybody, and one of the reasons why I wanted to try to get us into a prudent means of a downtown site, that the majority of this commission could agree on, is because if a downtown site that the majority of them don't agree on, then I think that throws some places into this whole puzzle for other sites that maybe aren't downtown, and some other people maybe can answer that. But that's why I'm trying to get the discussion opened up to a point where we can talk about it, and I appreciate your asking. So I can answer for me. JUDGE FLEMING: I'm probably the only one here that can talk more than you can, because I've got the microphone. But anyway, I was laboring under that impression. MR. CHEEKS: The discussion among the commission was for the judicial center to remain downtown if we get the votes to put it down here. That we would look into putting the remainder of the government, at some centrally located facility, perhaps in the center of the city. That was the agreement, utilizing the existing municipal building as much as possible for y'all's functions, with the administration moving to another location. JUDGE FLEMING: Well, I was under the impression, and I think all these judges are under the impression, that the county commission wanted this building downtown, and that's where it should go. Do you have a different opinion? MR. CHEEK: No, sir, Judge Fleming. I just wanted to clarify that Mr. Hankerson and I do not have amnesia. We were not here when that decision was made. MR. BOYLES: Judge Fleming? JUDGE FLEMING: Yes, sir? MR. WILLIAMS: I'd like to add that we was told -- as a commissioner I was told that all of the attorneys were downtown, that we would -- it's going to be a conflict for them, and we needed to put this downtown. That wasn't a decision that I made, or any other commissioner made, to say it needs to go downtown. Because of the environment, all of the lawyers had invested downtown, we was told it had to go, or needed to go, downtown, and that's how it got to that point. JUDGE FLEMING: All right. Well, let me address that for just a few minutes. I'll address the downtown issue and I'll address site. We've been laboring under the impression that this site should be downtown, in downtown Augusta. Currently, downtown Augusta is Fifth Street to Thirteenth Street. There's not any really downtown Augusta below Fifth Street. I'm not trying to 21 pick any site. I'm not trying to suggest any site. But if you move away from downtown, then you've got all these lawyers offices downtown, and a lot of these lawyers are going to move to where the courthouse is. No question about that. They're going to move to where the courthouse is. Now, if you say we should move from downtown, where do you go? You go to where the people are. Where are the majority of the people you're going to serve? That's not downtown. I mean, you've got more people, truthfully, in Hephzibah, Georgia, than you've got downtown Augusta. So you say, well, we're going to build a courthouse in Hephzibah, Georgia, if you're talking about serving people. So if you're going to stay downtown, then you've got to look at what's available. Now, let's talk about this Reynolds Street piece of property for just a minute. In 1988 the city of Augusta bought that piece of property, which is a great piece of property for industrial development or some kind of development; right? They paid a million dollars for it almost, $900,000, and they put it in the city of Augusta's name, and they've been holding it from -- until 1995, when a lawsuit was brought that said, wait a minute, pension fund money was used to buy this property, so it should be in the pension fund and it should be in the city of Augusta, and I had to sign an order that said put it back, and then they said that was a mistake, should never have been in the city's name to begin with, but we won't get into that. But anyway, it's in the pension fund. Now, what is the piece of property worth today? Probably a $1,250,000. If you had a million dollars invested in 1988, and had you progressed -- and it should progress, it should parlay into what? Four million today? I mean, you say it should double every seven years, shouldn't it? MR. CHEEK: Depending on which stocks you had it in. JUDGE FLEMING: Well, I mean, not recent stock, but I mean in 1988, it should have doubled in seven years, so that would be two million. Another seven years it should have been another four million. But it's only enhanced in value $250,000, and nobody's come forward and said we want to use it. Have you heard anybody want to use it? Anybody? Has anybody heard anybody want to use it? I'm talking about the Reynolds Street property. If you have, I'd like to know, because I haven't heard anybody trying to buy it, and some of the pensioners who are beneficiary of the pension fund, said we would like to get this money better invested. They told me that, now. I'm not trying to sell the property, I'm not trying to sell the site, but that's the only piece of property I know of downtown that's vacant, that could be used for a court facility. Now, you had mentioned a site – MR. MAYS: Judge, could I answer that for just a minute? JUDGE FLEMING: I'm going to let you talk when I finish. MR. MAYS: Well, you asked -- you asked that I -- could someone answer that -- JUDGE FLEMING: Yeah. Okay. MR. MAYS: -- so I was going to answer it. In reference to the pension property, the reason why that has not been promoted is because of the fact, just like you mentioned, because of the ownership of it, and by it being in the pensioner's name. At the particular time that the last sales tax came up, a particular effort was made -- in fact, I met with the pensioners on several occasions. Steve Shepard and myself were one of the -- two of the commissioners that asked that we try to 22 include -- and Jim, you know, we had a little difference about this. But the point was, I felt that if we were going to try and get it as a promotional entity, whether it ended up being the judicial center, which was not on the plans at the time, whether it was going to end up being a combination of what Augusta Tomorrow wanted, or whether it was going to be to seek out what we were going to deal with future expansion of another hotel chain. I thought that the city needed to try and own that property. We also needed to relieve the pensioners of their fund. That was why we said at that time -- and I think those who were on the commission can remember. We said we would include that, to purchase that property, gentlemen, out of sales tax, so that it could be put in the city's name, and we -- after we decided that basically, Judge, there was a difference of opinion within part of the pensioners group to a point that maybe they needed to get more money, just like you were saying, and then the commission somewhat said, we're not going to move towards purchasing it. So therefore it got into that stalemate, and I think the reason why it got in that stalemate is because had the city had clear ownership to it, and would deal with it on an across the board basis, looking at investors independently, then I think you could have done it. But you're correct that nobody has. But I think there's a reason nobody has. Whether it's purposeful or accidental, it happened. JUDGE FLEMING: Let me interrupt you a minute. You left one thing out. You manage the pension fund, the pensioners don't. Right? MR. MAYS: That is correct. JUDGE FLEMING: I mean, they don't manage the fund at all, the pensioners don't. The people who are beneficiary of the pension fund don't manage the fund. You people manage it. MR. MAYS: But you've got to have six commissioners to go buy it. JUDGE FLEMING: I can't run the commission, now. I don't know where -- MR. MAYS: But I was just explaining to you how that was, and why -- JUDGE FLEMING: I just said, you run the pension fund. I can't control the commission. MR. MAYS: I wasn't being disrespectful, but I think I needed to clear that up. JUDGE FLEMING: Back to your site. I haven't looked at your site. However, I can tell you this, I have heard, and there's a rumor going -- or has been a rumor going to where that property has been purchased up there and it's all in one name, and I'm not sure about that. I don't know about that. This is sort of some rumor I heard, and I understand basically what it's for, too. But also, it's my information, and I get this from the lawyers who've done some work on this. Now, I didn't get it from Mr. Reece, who's the appraiser, that that canal is polluted from Thirteenth Street all the way down. I don't think there's any question about that. Now, whether this property's polluted, I do not know, and I'm not going to attempt to answer that. But I just do know that's a -- that is a -- supposed to be a known fact. There's some lawsuits about to be filed about it, I understand. 23 MR. WILLIAMS: That site is between Walker Street and Fenwick Street, and Eleventh Street and Ninth Street was -- did have some contamination, but it's been cleaned up, I think, about sixty-five or seventy percent. The property owner still owns it. They are willing to sell it. The pollution is -- you are correct about the stream. JUDGE FLEMING: Well, you know, that other hasn't been cleared up yet, that's over there that they've cleaning up. The gas company says they're cleaning up, or somebody's cleaning up and – MR. WILLIAMS: And you and I know -- don't know anything about that either. JUDGE FLEMING: I'm not -- MR. WILLIAMS: Right. So all I wanted to offer was another site that we could at least look at, to -- JUDGE FLEMING: All right. Now, if you're not going downtown -- all right, you're not going downtown. Where do you build the courthouse? MR. WILLIAMS: This is downtown. JUDGE FLEMING: Let's say if you're not. Now, where are you going? You go to where the people are. That's the same thing we did in Columbia County. When we got ready to build a new facility in Columbia County, we didn't go to Appling, Georgia, because all of you know Appling is not where the people are. The people are in Evans, so we went to where the people were, and that's where they built the courthouse. So if you want to go away from downtown, that's a decision that the commissioners have to make. Your decision to make is where you're going to put this facility. What we would like as judges, to be able to serve the people. This is not a judges' building. This is not going to be a judges' courthouse. This is not Bill Fleming's courthouse, and it's not Willie Mays' courthouse. It's the peoples' courthouse, and not Mr. Kuhlke's courthouse either. It's going to be the peoples' courthouse. And we don't want to say this is a building for judges. We're willing to offer any help we can to any -- to the people who design this building. We're willing to meet with you, offer any help we can. As what cost figures go into this building, we know approximately what -- what it costs. I've had some experience with it. I had experience up in Columbia County. I've got Tom Gunnells over there who's building two courthouses. I say he's building. He's involved in construction of two courthouses right now; one in Jackson County and what's the other county? MR. GUNNELLS: Walton County. JUDGE FLEMING: Walton County right now, that are being built. So he has a lot of expertise. Now I'm willing to answer any questions anybody has. We would like to have a facility built to accommodate all of the courts. Now, let me go one other thing and I'll answer questions. Let me mention one other thing. Some factors that have not been considered. Once you start construction, if we go on the present site that we're in, once you start construction we can't hold court with jack hammers out there going off, and everybody out there hammering and making noise. There's no way you can conduct court. In all probability you will have to move us out. My 24 estimation, it'll cost a million and a half dollars to rent space to try to put us somewhere while this construction's going on for a period of at least two years, maybe two and a half. I'd say a million and a half dollars. So that's a cost factor also that has to be figured in this equation. Where if you had a new facility, we can move out, move in one day, everything, or two days, and we move out. That cost factor's not in there. You save a million and a half dollars right there, or maybe two million. We also think that all of these facilities, and all the court personnel, everything should be under one roof. We shouldn't have part of the court down in one place, probation people other places. We don't mind state probation officers not being in this building, because we didn't provide for them. One other thing, too, I want to mention that ran this square footage up. At the last session of the legislature, they passed a bill that said you will have to have a public defender system in the state. That means we're going to have to have some office space, public defenders, so forth. When we added those figures in there, that increases numbers for the state. Now let's talk about cost just a minute. My information is, and I may be wrong, that the courts, by and through fees, fines, so forth, produce approximately eleven million dollars a year. My information is also that the courts, paying all its personnel, clerk of court, so forth, so on, runs to about four million. So you've got a seven million dollar windfall, if my math's correct, in there, which no problem with that. The county uses that for other things. Need the money. Not talking about that. But what I'm saying, this is -- this court facility is not like some of these others. It's not like it's just a complete drain on the county. Yes, sir? Now I'll be glad to answer questions, if I can. MR. CHEEK: Two quick questions. Have y'all looked and done everything -- I'm kind of like Willie. I get questioned at Walmart in the middle of the night about different things that are going on. About planning and scheduling and utilization of existing courtrooms to minimize the projected need for that period of time, have we done everything in-house to make sure we're getting the maximum out of our facilities? JUDGE FLEMING: Well, we've got two courtrooms, we've got eight judges that hold court, which means we can only schedule jury trials in two courtrooms. There's no way we can do anything to enhance that number, unless we went to holding court on the shift, and I don't intend to do that, and none of us plan to do that. I'll tell you right off that I'm not going to be in favor of holding court from eleven o'clock at night to seven o'clock in the morning, or any five o'clock until twelve. If anybody's thinking about that, then I'm not planning on doing that. I wasn't hired to do that. I'm sort of like commissioners. I like to quit about five o'clock in the afternoon, except on special occasions. Those special occasions when you meet once a month or twice a month, where we generally work at least once or twice a month too late. But anyway, to answer your question, yes. It's a difficult job. You can't imagine how difficult it is to set schedules, and schedule court with the limited space that we have. We need a general -- we need a general assembly room when we have 200 jurors come in. We have four or five courts going at one time. You forty jurors go to courtroom one, you forty go to courtroom two, and so forth, and when they're finished, go back in the general assembly room to accommodate about 250 people, and that would be on probably your first floor of your courthouse, if you build a new court facility. Yes, sir? MR. WILLIAMS: Judge, I think -- at least I agree with everything you said, as far as the facility and the size and that kind of thing. But we're talking about site now. Would you not consider Walker Street toEleventh Street to Fenwick Street downtown? 25 JUDGE FLEMING: We're not picking a site, as far as the judges. We haven't proposed a site. I haven't proposed a site. I haven't been out looking for sites. I was under the impression that the commission wanted to put this facility downtown, that it would be better to put it downtown. Let me say one other thing, now. When you move away from downtown, you've got to realize this. That when you get out and you start displacing these lawyers who have these offices downtown, they're subject to go to Columbia County, because a lot of them up there now. If they're going to move, they're subject to go to Columbia County. So what happens to that piece of property downtown on your tax base? It's gone, because nobody wants it. So you've got to consider that. Yes, sir? MR. HANKERSON: I haven't said anything today. I was happy that I went to Atlanta and met last week in one of our commissioners that was on the committee -- JUDGE FLEMING: Do you need this? If you do, I don't really need it at all. MR. HANKERSON: Yes. I'm Commissioner Bobby G. Hankerson, district five. As I looked at all the sites I tried to pick out the pros and cons of them, and I was glad to hear you say, Judge, that if you move anywhere, you have to move where the people are, and I think about some of the problems -- some of the areas in Augusta that we've been long waiting on some kind of revitalization. I know that none of the judicial staff going to have to be placed that's considered in the pre-construction costs of twenty million dollars if we decide the municipal site. Then also with Reynolds Street site, my concern -- I asked this when I was in Atlanta, about the -- those buildings right in front of there, the -- those little, what you call them? The historic buildings there that's not used now, whether that be a eyesore, or what we're going to do with that, trying to build a beautiful building around those. Then I looked across the street, across Reynolds Street where the other buildings, whether or not that -- if we use that particular site, whether we would even consider moving the building back this way and whether we could do away with the -- those red buildings in front of there. That's my problem with -- not problem, but that's my observation of those. Now, we do know that there is also another site that was proposed, and maybe before it's over with there may be a fifth site, because I'm kind of concerned now as I see and the more you speak, when you said move it where the people are. There is another site I would not name that I'm interested in something going there, even if the non-judicial staff will stay at the municipal site, and then we may talk about building a whole new building in another site where we don't have all of those problems, no pollution, or nothing like that, that we may consider. It's even closer, it's right at Phinizy Road, it's a exit in and out, it's centralized for people from Columbia County, south Augusta, wherever. It's about ten minutes from downtown, the present site, and it may be a good opportunity that we can really solve some problems in the people in the community, because we're talking about this going to have to be done with a vote, with special local options sales tax money, and there are some people out in south Augusta that's really been wanting something done. I'm not going to name no sites, because I don't want no prices increasing. But I think everybody here know where I'm talking about, as we're saying in south Augusta. So it may be another fifth site coming on board. I'd like to see -- I'd like to see this done, this beautiful plan, and I just hope that we can all come together and get something done. 26 JUDGE FLEMING: Well, let me say this if you're thinking about going to another site. First, let me talk about Reynolds Street for just a minute. We all know that that section of downtown Augusta is in need of something, because if you go down Reynolds Street across from where this piece of property where we're talking about, there's practically nothing over there except the museum. All of that buildings there, there's not anything to be desirable. That whole 500 block of Broad Street is -- if you go down there right now, I think you'll find there's a vacant sign on most of it, or a for sale sign. It's not being utilized. If you put a courthouse on this location, that property will start to become utilized for office space for lawyers, because they're going to move there close to the courthouse. That whole block will be vitalized -- revitalized, and it will help downtown Augusta, no question about that. If you want to go out into the county, then I would say don't go out trying to buy something that's got a lot of houses on it and stuff. Go out and get ten or fifteen acres of land, and you've got plenty of land for the future. Now, when they built that jail down there by Fourth -- on Fourth Street, when you think about that, that was some -- not the best planning in the world, let me say that, because you've got to transport the people that you arrest from way out in the county down here to Fourth Street; right? Nobody lives down there that you arrest. The people you arrest living out somewhere else. Now, Phinizy Road was a little improvement, and that's a nice facility out there, no question about that, and that's close to the people that you're arresting. But if you say, we'll put a jail down here at Fourth Street, then that wasn't a good location to begin with, quite frankly, because as I said, when you arrest people you've got to transport them to jail, so you've got all those miles you've got to go up and down the road hauling people that you wouldn't have to carry otherwise. Now, I've talked a lot today. I've almost talked long as you talked. But if anybody has any other questions, I'll be glad to attempt to answer any questions, and that includes anyone here. MR. HANKERSON: I was thinking Gordon Highway and Deans Bridge, somewhere along in that area. JUDGE FLEMING: Whatever it is, if you're going to go that way -- MR. HANKERSON: That's no houses -- JUDGE FLEMING: What we say is, give us a new courthouse, and not some halfway job. I mean, do something that the people can be proud of. Now, if you go up to Columbia County, I think you'll find that the people in Columbia County are proud of that facility, and I was involved in that facility. Matter of fact, I made a lot of speeches, or several speeches, to civic groups and so forth, and up there I -- they had to pass a one mill increase on taxes in order to pay for that facility, along with the jail, and there was no problem with people voting for it in Columbia County. No problem at all up there. Now, I'm not saying what would happen in Richmond County if you talk about a one mill increase in taxes. But anyway, if no further questions, I'm going to sit down. MR. KUHLKE: Oscar, I think you wanted to say a few things. MR. TURNER: Commissioner Mays, you asked a question about the twenty million and why we're up to the number we are. Would you just hit the points succinctly on -- that he just -- 27 and we'll be happy to supply you with a piece of paper that can hit those points for you. But if you'll just go through them succinctly. MR. GREENE: The question is why does the municipal -- repeat the question so I make sure I'm -- MR. MAYS: Not so much on the twenty, because I never thought twenty would really do it. What I was looking at was, the last figures that we were talking about downtown, when it got up into the forties and where we are now with these numbers on the municipal building site. MR. GREENE: How is it that we got the numbers that we did? MR. MAYS: Were there additional properties figured in in the new figures that weren't there before, because I'm looking at site pre-construction, twenty-four million dollars, which is three times higher than May Park, twelve -- ten times higher than Reynolds Street, and that's why I'm asking what -- is that where the biggest jump occurred that was in there, on new acquisitions in that area. MR. GREENE: Well, the answer is yes. That is where the biggest jump occurred, because it became clear once the program grew to 300,000 square feet or so that you couldn't -- that you needed to do a new building of 185,000 square feet, plus 100,000 square feet of renovations -- 115,000 square feet of renovation in the old building. Those are what add up to this fifty-two million here, which really you look at that in relationship to the twenty or the forty. So that basic construction cost went from -- say forty that turned into twenty somehow, that's now fifty-two. Those -- the reason the municipal building was less in construction than the other two is that you've got less new building and more renovation. Now, the reason that site and pre-construction is more in municipal and more in May Park is that in both of those sites, and particularly in the municipal building site, you've got to build another project before you can even start on your construction site. In the case of municipal building, you've got to relocate all those county offices that are in the municipal building right now for twenty million dollars or so, somewhere else. There's a county office building project that needs to happen on some other site before we can even start building a courthouse. The courthouse cost is here. It's the fifty-two million. The same thing on May Park. On May Park you've got a six and a half million dollar playground, community center, and fire station, et cetera, et cetera, which you've got to build somewhere else before you can even build your courthouse. And what that means, is that time period -- that's the reason why May Park construction is more than Reynolds construction. It takes you longer to wait for that other project to build, and therefore escalation increases the cost of the building construction. Does that answer your question, Mr. Mays? MR. MAYS: I'm understanding everything you've got in there in terms of numbers. But in terms of where they are located for site pre-construction, I guess to keep all of it uniform. But since -- since we're going to end up doing something with the municipal building, there's already a source of money that's set aside for that building to do it. Does it belong in there, in terms of -- when I read that, if I'm not on the commission, I'm not in the judiciary, I read it as general public, as though you're basically having to acquire something that deals with twenty-four million dollars. As long as there's a breakdown within that acquisition as to where that goes, I think you -- 28 you've answered that adequately. I say this as chairman of public services. I'd love to have the six million dollars for the park, going to May Park. I think one thing that needs to be said, and I say it, I will get into other sites. What is this question about Reynolds Street, I think you're absolutely correct that something has to be replaced prior to doing that if you were doing May Park. And in that eight million -- I'm just assuming now, Mr. Chairman, but does that include in there, since you're talking about six on one hand, eighty-eight point one in the total, does that include the acquisition of probably the closest piece of property that's in there in order to make those two differences in there? MR. KUHLKE: Correct. MR. MAYS: That's where I was going with that part of it. But now I want to say this. I'm still committed to a downtown site, and that's why I think it's important, because I'm not going to make that decision alone. There's going to be ten folks, possibly eleven, make that decision, and I think that's why it's real important that whether it's the three you've got on board or something else - - now, I was glad to know why -- I know the judges can't get into this one, but they might end up hearing it. But I say this to my city attorney, since it's been brought up, Jim, if we've got that much contamination on the canal, amongst a lot of other things that the judge and I agree with as old friends, I think we better stepping up the path. The canal, the last time I checked, belonged to us, and that's why I've been pushing for the last several years that these public properties -- not only the private folk need to be suing. If we've got that much contamination in the city, then the gentlemen on the commission, y'all need to know that I ain't just doing forty-three minutes of talking. Somewhere we need to be filing suit against somebody who's contaminated that much public property, because if we've got that much inner city property that we cannot use, then somebody needs to be dealing with it to pay for it. So that may not be where you got that on that point, but I think it's relevant to what Marion is talking about if you've got a big tract over there and there's nothing you can do with it other than putting parking decks on it, then somewhere we're going to have to address that as an issue, too. That's not y'all's ballgame to deal with, I realize that. But if we're going to talk about alternative sites, and obviously when y'all get to build something, I will also then be a has-been as well. Judge, my term'll be up, I'll be gone. I will no longer have this $12,000 part-time, full-time job that does not stop at five o'clock. It runs twenty-four, seven everyday. It costs me more to be down there than I make out of it, but I love what I'm doing. But somewhere here I think that if other sites are going to enter, then before we spend up all of our professional service money being married to where we are, gentlemen, we might need to have some other things for y'all to look at, because it costs you every time you change. It costs you every time you go up. It costs you every time you make a pencil change to downsize something. So if the politics of it is going to be the site, I mean, I just believe they're being wrong by what you're talking about. You know, like I said the other day, I don't want to be playing this shell game. If you've got opinions that are bad, I think we have to be respectful of opinions that differ. Constituencies, areas differ. I got everything from the river to the northside of Tobacco Road. But I think that if that's going to be the case and you're opening that up, then Mr. Chairman, I told you the other day correctly, you wasn't losing this job in December. You're going to be around a long time, because it may mean that the three y'all got may not be the only three sites out there. Personally speaking, I'd like to see us be downtown. But if other things are going to enter to where that complexion changes, gentlemen, we might as well be honest enough to talk about it that if there was a consensus. And how we got to that municipal building, that's why I'm so concerned about it, from 29 the standpoint that it kind of was the so-called consensus place that would not be a blood letting battleground to deal with it. And that's why when I start hearing all the different things that got to be bad about it, because a few months ago everything I heard about it was good about it. Now it got to be terrible. Not only terrible with money, it got to be terrible with planning. And I just have to say this about the jackhammers. We knew in the very beginning when y'all started talking about the fact that you were going to have to have a building over there, it was going to be some noise. I mean, I wondered about that then. I said, well, that's just great. You can't hear nothing when the trains go by. I know you can't hear nothing when you're going to build another building. They'll be out there every day. I made that statement at that time. So, I mean, I'm not throwing off of where y'all have gotten with it. But I just think you've got to be realistically honest, that when these things pop back up and start costing more money, numbers change that drastically, then before we run out of money on what we've got allocated for y'all, we might need to look back, whether it's what Commissioner Hankerson wants to put on the table, whether it's what Commissioner Williams wants to put on the table. But for God's sake, we're going to have to reach a consensus soon to deal with something, and that's how we got to the consensus of the other point. But I think when you reach a consensus and then you make drastic moves that the consensus site becomes terrible, that gives me a problem. I don't want y'all -- as much respect as I have for the professional team that's there, I don't want y'all to end up getting all our money planning these three sites here, and then the money run out and we've got to allocate some more to get y'all to look at something else. And I say that in a friendly mood of where I'm going with that. MR. GREENE: Well, the one thing is, I want you to know that we're here to make you a success in this project. One thing I wanted to say as far as that success that all of you should be aware of, I mean, I would have hoped that if we would have had the drawings completed, right now would be a fantastic time to go out for a bid on this project, as far as the construction, because you could get a good figure, and that'll probably hold for another -- you know, it'll start to tick up for another one year or so. But after that, it -- I mean, things are going to be kicked back up, and the number's going to go up. So what I'm just trying to say as far as time is concerned, time is basically of the essence on choosing whatever the choice, because your -- because your total construction dollars, what it will buy, is always going down and eroding. So I just want you to be aware of that. So, try and do that in a timely fashion. MR. MAYS: Let me just ask this very quickly, on two questions, Bill. Now, I mentioned -- I think I tried to be fair on maybe some questions on every one of these sites, and I said I'd come back to Reynolds Street down here, too. But now, talking about the so-called atmosphere of downtown and what you bring it, now I think on one hand we made the point of moving people and having them down there supporting it. That's good. But now let me ask this. If we got the museum where we're sitting in, one of the oldest churches in America, St. Paul's over there, and I know they're not necessarily twenty-four seven, and they aren't even nine to five on seven days a week with operations of everybody. But you've got the riverfront, the marina, and all this that's in there. If you -- are you planning then a total hidden situation of where you would actually have your prison population movement coming into Reynolds Street to this facility that would be totally invisible from where you are? Because one of the reasons for even suggesting May Park was the fact that you would -- we own the streets, and I think when you talk about the biggest site, you've also got to consider the fact that we own Fourth Street. We also own Walton Way. Last 30 time I checked, the city owned the streets. So you can include to the point of what you own, not just May Park, but the property we bought in the first jail acquisition that we've got other things sitting on. We've got more property that is just May Park. But when I heard you say that about it would not make a difference about movement of these folks and getting them in a car, unless we're going to move -- but I think this does play into it. Unless you're going to move all the prison population from down there in that building -- I lost that fight, Judge, because I didn't intend for it to get down there. They whipped my butt on that one. But unless you're going to move all those folks from down there, that's not going to be non-existent on Walton Way, wouldn't somewhere in there -- if we're going to talk about intangibles, wouldn't somewhere in there the movement of those folks over the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years be figured into it? How then you transport them to a point that if you've got security tunnels, if you've got passageways to move them, that you're not dealing with that factor in there, and you're moving from one place to another one? We just witnessed that in Virginia. One of the reasons they're holding a security trial there, because it's one of the few facilities they've got. They've got the tunnel that's there to be able to move them, and it was picked as a choice of site to do that there. So, I mean, I had enough problem with understanding that travel and cost and the visibility on that scope. I'm glad you said they'd be hidden. But I think when you talk about it doesn't make a difference, I think it does if you can save to a point, not only on personnel, but on gas, on -- and I drive Fords, Frank, so I can say this. But, you know, we own car dealerships. We've got a lot of big toys and a lot of vans to a point -- and that's times years, times people. All that goes into it. So, you know, I'm just throwing it out. I'm not being critical of one place. I'm just throwing those things out to a point that I think is -- if you had different steps from different locations, I just think all that needs to go into the equation of what y'all talking about because, you know, soon we're going to have to do something. I still support the state of the art. I still support it being brand new. I still support it being downtown. But it's going to have to be to a point where I think we consider everything in that factor based on what we do. MR. KUHLKE: Unless somebody else has got another comment, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion that we receive this as information, that maybe we recess after this. I want to thank Ms. Bonner for all the work she's done in setting up lunch downstairs, and then maybe reconvene after lunch. MR. BOYLES: So moved. MR. BRIDGES: Second. MR. KUHLKE: Motion is seconded. Are we going to reconvene now or -- could we go ahead and -- MR. COLCLOUGH: Let's hear the motion first, then we'll talk about it. MR. KUHLKE: I'll delete that out of my motion, as far as the recess goes. MR. COLCLOUGH: Have we got a motion and a second on the floor? All in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. All opposed, likewise. Motion carries. Thank you. 31 MR. KUHLKE: We have one other item on the agenda and it's concerning the pension, so I think if anybody has no interest -- now, we do have -- we do have lunch downstairs, and we'd like to invite you to go down and have something to eat if you'd like. 3 [Whereupon, a recess was taken.] MR. COLCLOUGH: If you are going to stay for the meeting, have seat. If not, if you could kind of clear our. We are going to start the other part of our meeting. MR. HANKERSON: Call the meeting to order. Meeting to order. At this time, as you know, there's a -- we had a pre-committee meeting this morning so we could expedite on time, looked over some items that we needed to address by August the 1st, some changes in the pension plan that were recommended, so at this time -- at this time we're going to ask Attorney Wall to present those recommendations from the pension plan subcommittee this morning, with the assistance of Commissioner Cheeks and myself as a two-man committee, and also Commissioner Broyles has been working diligently with us on that committee, and also with personnel department and administrator was present, too. So at this time Mr. Wall will present those recommendations from the pension plan subcommittee. MR. WALL: As many of you will recall, as a result of some new IRS rules and regulations and statutes, we're having to look at all of our pension plans in order to bring them in compliance with those new statutes. Because the GMEBS plan was administered by the State Municipal Association, they took responsibility for looking at the GMEBS plan. They have received a favorable -- they received a favorable ruling from the IRS insofar as the revised plan. However, there are certain decisions that the commission must make, and I'm going to present the recommendations from the subcommittee that met this morning, and I can go back and address any particular questions. Those of you who have your agenda book, if you want to follow along with me I'll try to identify those. First, on page two regarding the class of eligible employees, we need to make one change in what they have presented in that the GMEBS plan would cover those that were employed effective March 1, 1987. However, since consolidation occurred on January 1, 1996, we elected at that time to put all new hires into the 1977 county plan, and so there needs to be a change from what they presented such that it would encompass only that window between March 1, 1987 and January 1, 1996. The second item is paragraph number one of the letter concerning mandatory versus optional participation, and the committee has recommended that -- that you not have the option of opting out and then get back into the plan. Once you make the decision, that becomes irrevocable. That is a requirement of the IRS and that is the way the document has been drafted. A new change insofar as paragraph number two, they have added a secondary or a contingent beneficiary, and have also included a default beneficiary, such that in the event that you name your spouse, for instance, as the beneficiary and the spouse predeceases you, that there would be a secondary beneficiary, and then there would be a default beneficiary in the event that you fail to choose one at all, and the default beneficiary would be the participant's spouse, or if there is no spouse, then it would be the children. And that's the recommendation of the commission to make that change in the old plan to the new one. The next change is a break in service, which is paragraph number three. Currently if you leave the city and six months -- well, a year and a half later come -- you come back to work for the city, in order to restore the prior service if you're not vested, you must work that year and a half time period before you can reinstate your prior service. 32 The recommendation is that that be limited to one year, or that the period would be one year. You would have to come back and work for a period of one year before you would be credited to your prior service, that you had prior to leaving the city. And that's the recommendation of the committee. The next item is paragraph number four, insofar as in-service distribution provisions, and the committee considered the option of whether or not to allow or disallow in-service contributions or distribution of benefits. In other words, if you reach age of sixty-five and can retire, can you retire and both continue to work and receive both the retirement benefits as well as the compensation that you would receive. It was the recommendation of the committee that you allow for retirement when you reach the retirement age. However -- and you would be able to continue to work under a continuation of work agreement, and the continuation of work agreement would include such things as no additional benefits. It would include restrictions on the time. It would include provisions such that in the event that the work became satisfactory, that you could get rid of that employee and minimize the risk insofar as age discrimination complaints and things of that nature. And that was the recommendation of the committee. The next item is paragraph number five concerning definition of earnings. The agreement as drafted includes all earnings that were -- are reflected on the W-2, which would include things such as severance compensation, or more importantly perhaps, overtime compensation. And the recommendation of the committee is that we leave it currently as-is, which is the base salary is what your earnings are -- the average of your earnings is based upon your base salary, without taking into consideration any overtime that may accrue. Paragraph six just deals with termination of disability benefits, and the plan as drafted would include a termination of benefits based upon a social security determination or a determination by the pension committee based upon a physician's examination, and that's the recommendation of the committee there. Item number seven is an IRS requirement that the death benefits be payable to non-spouse beneficiaries immediately, as opposed to a deferred payment of those benefits, and that's the recommendation of the committee to make that change. Paragraph number eight deals with joint ser -- joint annuities. Currently, obviously you can choose a joint annuity, both you and your spouse, but you -- the payment is reduced because obviously one spouse is going to live out -- outlive the other, or in most situations. Not always. They have what they call a pop-up provision such that at the death of the first, the benefit would pop-up to the level that it would have been had it just been a single beneficiary as opposed to a joint annuity, and that's the recommendation of the committee. Item number nine deals with portability, and this includes a more flexible portability provision. If you leave one city and go to work with another city that has a GMEBS plan, currently ours is very restrictive, which doesn't allow the transfer of service if the switch is greater than sixty days. The recommendation is that that be one year, and that was the recommendation of the committee, and we're recommending that. Paragraph number ten concerns forfeiture of pension benefits in the event of a conviction of a crime. Our current plan lists several limited criminal offenses, and what this does is incorporate the Georgia statute which defines public employment related crimes. It's the recommendation of the committee that we use the Georgia statute in that regard. Item number eleven deals with the actuarial factors for calculating lump-sum payments, and the recommendation that we make that change. Item twelve is a provision that allows pre-tax contributions by an employee, and that will be of benefit to the employees and our payroll system apparently is already set up to allow that. We're recommending that we allow for pre-tax employee contributions. The final items, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen are administrative provisions. Thirteen would allow the GMEBS board of trustees the authority to amend and interpret the plan based upon future changes in the tax laws. Paragraph fourteen requires that we designate someone as the plan administrator, and we're recommending that that be 33 the city administrator. And then paragraph fifteen is the pension committee, and that would be the commission, as well as two representatives elected from the active participants in the GMEBS plan. It was the recommendation that those changes be included in the adoption agreement, and that the commission approve an ordinance -- the pension plan is basically an ordinance, and that the ordinance be adopted to incorporate that. We didn't discuss it, but I'll ask that you waive the second reading and adopt it today in those forms. MR. BOYLES: I'll move to second it. MR. BRIDGES: Motion to second to waive second reading and to accept this in this form. We ready to vote? Mr. Mays? MR. MAYS: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Wall, everything's in order now? MR. WALL: Yes, sir. MR. MAYS: But we're waiving a second reading. MR. WALL: I understand. MR. MAYS: We've got a lot of stuff in there. MR. WALL: Yes, sir. But we've got a deadline of August 1, too. MR. MAYS: Well, I -- don't get me started right now about it. I mean, I've got to ask that question, because pension stuff is very important with a lot of folks lives, and I want to make sure. I want to check it for any typographical things, minor technical changes, and I have no problem with casting a vote. But now, if this is a -- I'm glad first of all. I thank everybody involved with this, administrator, yourself, other people that's put the time into this. That's to be appreciated. But I just want to make sure that when we make pension changes, we've not had the best history on making pension decisions. I just want to make sure before I vote to waive a second reading that there are not some little horse in the road that you need to cross and get out of the way before you go with this thing. MR. WALL: The only horse in the road is -- does not deal with the '87 pension plan. But as I forewarned the committee, I think the issue about allowing someone to retire and then be rehired under a reemployment agreement, even though it may have restrictions on it, but you're basically double dipping, because you're drawing retirement and you're drawing salary. I think you're going to face that issue with regard to every one of the pension plans, because I think those pensioners are going to request the same provision in their pension plan. As Commissioner Boyles brought up in the committee meeting, insofar as the early retirement is concerned in 1996, we required each one of those who opted to take the early retirement sign an agreement that they would not be rehired by the city, and each one of them signed that agreement. That is a potential that I think that you will have to face with the other pension plans. There was a good bit of discussion about it, but the consensus of the committee was that because of some deficiency that they saw in some of the other pension plans, that that was a change that they supported. 34 MR. MAYS: Well, if -- Mr. Chairman, if I might, and I'm not trying to be overly critical, but that's kind of what I wanted out on the table, because I remember that that was -- that was a decision that was made at the time, and if that's going to be an issue, say for -- I realize people can file and make what you may say are frivolous lawsuits all the time. But if that's going to be an area of the pension to be dealt with, are we now coming to a point that this has to be done mainly because there is no meeting until past the deadline, or what is that issue, because there are different plans floating around, and I read part of what you read there, as well as reference to people living -- leaving rather, and then there's the non-benefit situation that's there. Let me just pose a hypothetical. There are some people that probably would deal with the retirement option that's in there, and when I go about town and I watch, I always use -- and I won't call a name, but a particular veteran deputy that we have, that when I watch people working in a -- nothing demeaning about it, but in a grocery store setting in order to maintain benefits to deal with their spouse and to help with medical and to do that, I think you're hitting on a lot. If this was a August 1 drop dead date, or some of this is included in there, I'm a little uncomfortable. MR. HANKERSON: Let me speak to that. We are -- we discussed that, and personally I thought it was a step forward, as far as allowing employees that retire to be rehired under a contract, because that's what's normally done with state employees and so forth. Unfortunately, that -- at this -- as you say, the drop dead date, August the 1st, that we was pushed by the IRS according to the information that I received, that had to be done. That's why we had a called meeting to do it. Another thing that we discussed in the meeting this morning, that with the plan that we're working on for all of the retired benefit plans, and some of them may be eliminated depending on the success of the committee that's in place and what we recommend for a better retirement plan, then, you know, we may not even have a GMEB plan recommended in the future with what we're trying to do, and what you all have given us the opportunity to do the study. So we're waiting about two weeks for that to come back, and then we'll have new recommendations. So all of this may -- you know, we don't know how long it's going to last. If we accept a new retirement plan, or early retirement, or getting rid of some of the other plans, the '77, the GMEB, and just having, you know, one plan besides the '49. We know that one's locked in, but that's what we're looking at in the study. Basically, I thought that that would give employees opportunity to retire, and if they retire -- like you said, you saw somebody working that couldn't come back to work in the same job, or work for the city again, but this would give people opportunity. But it's unfortunate with this plan that we address it now. Mr. Cheeks? MR. CHEEK: The reason this is a good idea, I'll give you two examples. Say Max Hicks decides to retire. We hire a second in command. We're then able, if we pass this, to have him come back in a consulting or limited service employee capacity for up to a year or whatever the economic and business needs of the city are, and bring that new department head up to speed without losing ground. Then we'll go to the police officer, another good example. With the police officer, for instance, we have Fourth of July and First Friday happen again. The police officers that retire that maintain their certification come in and work one or two nights a week as a Richmond County deputy without them being listed as full-time employees, still maintain some level of benefits, whatever we negotiate, but we're able to double our force and give some incentives to our retired employees without the additional cost of adding full-time personnel. This is done across industry and it's really a limited service employee, which these people would become, serving the 35 pleasure of the -- based on contract of the government, for some predetermined rate of money which may not be their salary that they left with, with some set of benefits which may not be the same as, but would enable us to keep that experience, those certifications and all that training for future use in the government, and give our former employees, our retirees, something they can do without having to go work for Walmart or somewhere else when they retire. So it's a good thing. I really think we should support and look at doing it in the future. Thank you. MR. WILLIAMS: I'm really uncomfortable, Jim, with waiving the second reading because of what Commissioner Mays has brought to light, in that we've got some -- we have been asked to sign saying that they cannot, and now we're going to say -- I agree that it can be an asset. But why are we always up against a wall? MR. WALL: Let me address that, because I anticipated that. This document came in from GMEBS -- we were not involved in the preparation of this. We didn't review it. We were not consulted with it -- on Monday, July the 7th. I spoke with the people that needed to be consulted with insofar as how to handle this thing, Commissioner Hankerson, the administrator, about whether or not to put it on to the commission meeting on July the 15th, which was the next commission meeting. That did not give sufficient time -- and the only other scheduled July commission meeting. GMEBS is the one who gave us the August 1 deadline, and they also requested that we get any changes to them in sufficient time for them to make the changes prior to August 1, so that they've got a signed document by August 1. At my urging, Commissioner Hankerson agreed to hold a committee meeting to review this, although arguably it's outside the scope of what you were originally asked to do in that subcommittee. But I felt it needed to be reviewed by some commissioners in order to make a recommendation, and this is the earliest that that committee meeting could be scheduled, was today. The commission meeting was called for today, I thought it would be an appropriate time to add it on. If you're not comfortable in voting on it and to waiving a second reading, we did the first reading. We can have a second called meeting between now and August the 1st to have it voted on the second time. MR. WILLIAMS: What's the penalty? I mean, let's say that we don't -- you know, we pass the deadline? MR. WALL: Then we do not insure, and I use that word, continued tax qualification status of the plan, which means that all the benefits that our participants have received are possibly taxable to them, which would mean that we would have to send out notices to all the participants that potentially the benefits that they have received over the past several years are taxable benefits, which would require them to file amended tax returns, which would create penalties on our part, which would create a mess. MR. WILLIAMS: I agree. I agree with the mess it would create. I just -- anything this important, I think it should be brought before now and I hear what you're saying. I just -- I'm a little bit leery because people have been asked to sign statements saying they would not be employed and come back, and now we're saying we open up. That's going to rescind and we're going to have to discuss that. I get kind of, you know, a little leery about it. That's the comment I wanted to make. That's all. 36 MR. MAYS: Let me first thank y'all for trying to move ahead on -- on the schedule that GMEBS and those put you on. I agree that you've got to do some creative things with Augusta- Richmond County's work force as it gets older. Some things have been explained to a point, and I think that's why you have these where you can ask questions. I'll probably go ahead and vote for it. What I would think would be prudent though, Jim, is that it might do well to at least have some conversation once this is done, if it passes, with the leadership of the various groups that you've got involved. I think you know where I'm coming from? Because it's for that reason I asked the question as to what may come up as a hang nail later. I think the overall good, as the chairman and Commissioner Cheeks have both stated, that the intentions, number one, are good. So, I mean, that's not where you're trying to take anything. But I think if you've got a problem there that you see, I think the best way to do it is to have some communication with persons who may hear about this and not know what the full impact of it is, and then you end up with a commission agenda item to where you've got seventy-five to 100 people there that may not understand it, or people, as Marion said, that have signed off to say they could not do the same thing. My second suggestion is, somebody in working with GMEB or anybody else, sometimes it's important that you pay to put things together. Again, I congratulate the committee and the administrator. But I think people that you pay to do certain things professionally outside the government, you also have to let them know that you have a time frame that you have to deal with, that you have things that you have to discuss with people, and that when they bring this type of stuff, if there are potentials on the horizon that you've got to deal with, they need to understand that. We're not the only city they work with. They know that in certain situations you've got to have political parameters you've got to deal with, and I think that it might be a good -- just a little -- just a little hand spanking lesson to let them know that we didn't want to throw this into chaos to do it. But that something that's that important to a point that you have, do not have those kind of dates just throwed out there, even when -- even when the package is good. They may not have been aware of some of our past deals that we put together, and that may not have been on the horizon. But I think, too, when people talk with these folks, that you have to make them aware of what things you have out there. It's just like you buying car insurance and you've got ten cars. If you've got two jalopies and eight of them that's running, and you plan on driving all ten of them, you can't say you've just got the eight that's out there. You've got to let them know you've got two raggedy ones that's out there, that pollute the air, may not stop, and you've got to insure them, too. That's the only point I'm making, and I'll vote for the motion you've got out there. MR. HANKERSON: I think that's something we probably need to also make known with GMA, because that's where we got the communication from, and we are -- we serve on those committees, about the time frame and so forth. MR. KUHLKE: Let's call the question. MR. HANKERSON: At this time we call for the question. All in favor of the recommendations from the subcommittee, please show the sign. Have we got a vote? MS. BONNER: Mr. Williams didn't vote, so I'm assuming present. Seven for, and Mr. Williams voting present. 37 MR. WALL: We'll need a called meeting. Can we do it on Monday? Second reading on the ordinance. It has to be unanimous. MR. KUHLKE: Do it at twelve o'clock. MR. WILLIAMS: I'll reconsider my vote then, if it has to be. MS. BONNER: Okay. It's unanimous. MR. HANKERSON: Unanimous. Also, let me mention this. Will the employees get all this update information on changes? They really need the changes that's made. MR. WALL: I assume that -- an updated pension plan. MR. HANKERSON: Right. Thank you. This meeting adjourned. [MEETING ADJOURNED AT 1:50 P.M.] Lena J. Bonner Clerk of Commission CERTIFICATION: I, Lena J. Bonner, Clerk of Commission, hereby certify that the above is a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Called Meeting of Augusta Richmond County Commission held on July 24, 2003. _______________________________ Clerk of Commission 38