Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners recently identified five key projects that they want to pursue, should the undertakings qualify for the $14 million or so in Restore Act funding that was allocated to the county several years ago as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.
After much back-and-forth on the issue on Thursday morning, Aug. 6 – including input from School Superintendent Jackie Pons – the commission voted to distribute the $14 million as follows: $2.5 million for jail reconstruction; $1.5 million for courthouse renovation and the balance of the money to be divided equally for construction of a new Emergency Operation Center (EOC), expansion of broadband connectivity and for establishment of a trade school here in conjunction with the school district.
The discussion to arrive at the decision of how to split the funding was lengthy, circuitous and at times contradictory, but ultimately it proved productive.
County Manager Doug Baber began the conversation by noting that October was the time to submit requests for the funding of projects, adding that he had been working closely with County Attorney Evan Rosenthal and Commissioner Jessica Gramling to complete the process timely.
Gramling is this county’s representative on the Gulf Consortium, the public entity created after the 2010 oil spill to manage and distribute the billions of settlement dollars that resulted from the federal government’s lawsuit against the companies responsible for the environmental disaster. The consortium is made up of representatives from the 23 counties in Florida with coastlines on the Gulf, including Jefferson County.
Baber reminded that board of its earlier discussion to divide the $12.5 million in Restore Act funding into various buckets and the projects that it wanted to see funded with the money.
“So the EOC and the jail were in one bucket and you had three other buckets related to the courthouse, broadband and a trade school,” Baber said.
The purpose of the current discussion, he said, was to nail down exactly what projects the board wanted to see pursued and what amounts should be dedicated to each.
“I’m seeking board direction,” Baber said.
Rosenthal clarified that he and county staff had already run the hardening of jail and expansion of broadband service passed the consortium, and the latter had indicated that use of the money for such projects was acceptable.
He further noted that listing of projects on the State Expenditure Plan (SEP) did not commit the county to pursue the identified projects. Inclusion in the SEP, he said, was a first step in a long process.
“Just because you've got a project in the SEP doesn't mean that you have to do it,” Rosenthal said. “There are tons of projects in the plan from other counties that are never going to get done.”
The SEP is the state’s detailed plan outlining how the oil spill money will be used. To be eligible for the funding, county projects must be listed on the SEP and be approved by the consortium.
Baber next offered what he called a staff-level recommendation for the use of the named funding. The first recommendation, he said, was to use the $375,000 appropriation that the county had recently received from the legislature to cover the cost of the design and engineering plans for the EOC expansion, thus making it a shovel-ready project.
Such an expenditure, he said, would put the county in a better place to secure the Restore Act funding, as it would show the county’s seriousness and commitment to pursuing the project.
“With these Restore Act dollars, that's what we want,” Baber said. “We want shovel-ready projects. We want items that we can say we've done our due diligence and all the necessary legworks. It looks better on us if we are not looking at pie-in-the-sky projects.”
He estimated that the cost of the EOC expansion would be about $5.5 million beyond the $375,000 already in hand, with the idea being to connect the new building to the existing one. The expansion, he said, was warranted because the present facility was inadequate to accommodate a gathering of the necessary emergency response personnel should a major storm strike the area.
“So if you’re running a total of $12.5 million, that’s the first $5.5 million,” Baber said.
Additionally, he said, the sheriff’s office had separately received a $2.5 million legislative appropriation for the hardening of the existing jail, which amount was half of what had been requested.
Consequently, Baber said, the sheriff was asking for an additional $2.5 millions of Restore Act funding to complete the jail renovations.
“So if you’re keeping a total, that would be eight million of the available Restore Act funding,” Baber said.
The courthouse renovation was another priority project, he said, noting that when the work was put out for bids the lowest was $2.3 million. The county, he said, currently had about $800,000 that it was using to focus on the needed roof repairs and others of the things that needed to be corrected for the building to be in code.
Beyond the $800,000, however, there remained another $1.5 million that was needed to complete the project, he said, offering that the Restore Act funding could be used to fill this gap.
“Now we're at $9.5 million,” Baber said, keeping tabs. “Here’s where it gets a little tricky. It leaves $3 million for the other two items, a possible trade school and broadband expansion.”
There followed a wide-ranging discussion of the broadband and trade school issues and the possibility of using existing funds as leverage to access other grant funding, with Pons joining the conversation.
It also came up during this part of the conversation that a different pot of Restore Act funding available to the county contained about $1.5 million, bringing the total of Restore money that the county could possibly access to about $14 million.
Pons shared ongoing efforts by the school district to secure $7.5 million in state funding to establish a trade school or technical college here to enhance job opportunities for the community’s youths. He noted that the Florida Department of Commerce and Florida Department of Education were involved in the effort.
“So that’s all in play right now,” Pons said, adding that Jefferson County was one of only two school districts in the state that didn’t have a technical school, the other being Franklin County.
The $7.5 million that the district was requesting would not build the technical school in its entirety, but it would make for a good start, Pons said. He believed that such a facility would be a game changer in Jefferson County, he said. The commission’s involvement in the effort could only improve the district’s chances of getting the funding, he said.
“If you do decide to participate in this today,” Pons told the commission, “I think it would be very important, because all of a sudden, you’re putting $4 million or $3 million or whatever into the project, and I think that gives us more credibility that not only have we reached out for these grants, but that our commission is going to partner with us. It would give us, I think, a lot more clout.”
As the discussion developed, it appeared to be the consensus that $5.5 million of the Restore Act funding would go to the EOC, $2.5 million to the jail, $1.5 million to the courthouse, and the balance was to be divided between the trade school and broadband, including the money in the other Restore Act pot.
Gramling in fact made a motion to that effect, noting that $5.5 million would go to the EOC, $2.5 million to the jail, $1.5 million to the courthouse, $3 million to the trade school and the additional $1.5 million in the other pot would go to broadband.
Commissioner Austin Hosford, however, objected to the proposed distribution.
“To me, my number one priority is broadband,” Hosford said. “I think it's an essential service that every resident in this county needs. It may not be as important as water and electricity, but it’s pretty close. And my number two priority would be the technical school.”
He understood the needs of the jail and the EOC, he said, but as far as getting the biggest bang for the money and having the most direct and immediate impact on the residents, broadband and the technical school won hands down, he said.
The conversation continued for a while longer, with pros and cons of the various options further examined. Ultimately, however, Hosford’s recommendation carried, with $2.5 million to go to the jail, $1.5 million to the courthouse and the remaining $10 million to be split evenly among broadband, the EOC and the trade school.