At the request of Police Chief Cecila Ashe, Richard Y. Johnson & Sons presented to Milford City Council an explanation of the new police evidence building project. As Dean Johnson of RYJ explained, this was not in the budget for the new police station a few years ago.
“With the original police station, e didn’t have the funding to do the maintenance building or the evidence storage building, so we held off on that, Johnson said. “We were tasked, along with Becker Morgan to come back and reprice it. We made a few small changes.”
The estimated cost of the new building is $2.1 million. What was presented to council were the contracts for the new facility which is required due to changes at the state level of how evidence must be stored and processed. A list of the contracts approved can be found online.
“The finance department recommendation would be to approve the full amount, as reported by the chief in the memo. Because while RYJ adds in contingency that is related to the on-site construction contingency, there are owners’ contingencies that could come into play,” Lou Vitola, Finance Officer, said.
Councilman Jason James pointed out that contingencies were around $180,000 which was 10 percent of the project. He asked Vitola to explain how these compared to the police station project.
“When we did the police station, I think they were separated. It was two separate contingencies. I don’t recall the percentage amounts of the other contingencies,” Vitola said. “It’s not, it’s not titled that, but, but, and Dean can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s my understanding of the of the bid is that that’s builder’s contingency.”
James pointed out he was asking due to a previous question by Councilwoman Madula Kalesis about the contingency.
“For public record, to Councilwoman Madula’s comment, the memo says 2.5 is the final amount but the document says 2.4 and it doesn’t mention about the contingency added,” James said. So we just need documents to tie up somewhere, because when we’re all gone, someone’s going to look back at us and say, what did they do?”
The motion to accept the contracts for the police evidence building was approved with a vote of 7 to 0 with Councilwoman Katrina Wilson absent.
