BY PEPPER FISHER
PORT ANGELES – The effort to build a Joint Public Safety Facility in Port Angeles that would house both the County’s Emergency Operations and the 911 Communications Center is facing a setback, and City and County officials are working diligently to submit a pared-down redesign before some critical grants expire.
AOC, the designer/architect, came back with a bid of approximately $30 million to build the facility officials wanted. Clallam County Brian King was frank in describing their reaction as “sticker shock”, because the budget the City and County have to work with is short of that by $10 million. He says all concerned agree that raising another $10 million is not going to happen, and there seems to be no will on the part of the City Council or the County Board of Commissioners to take on any debt.
So now the parties are in the process of negotiating a redesign of the new Joint Public Safety Facility that can be built with a total budget of $20.3 million. Half of that budget is in the form of FEMA and state Commerce grants that could expire if new design documents aren’t submitted soon.
Sheriff King told KONP they are now focusing on “must have” versus “nice to have” facilities, and a smaller footprint on the property on Lauridsen Boulevard near the airport. Among the must-haves, King says they must build a seismically tolerant Emergency Operations and 911 Center that will stand up to a Cascadia subduction zone type of event.
As for the City’s part, which is the 9-1-1 Center, Police Chief Brian Smith told us the new layout still has his “must-haves”.
“The City wants a resilient, modern 911 Center that has adequate space for up to 50 years of growth in Clallam County. So, the floor area where the consoles are, the offices for the supervisors, and the core functions around that, would be like, “have to have”. But, we’re not giving up anything that’s going to compromise our effectiveness. I mean, as I’ve seen the redesign, a vast improvement over what we have right now. You know, much, much better. I mean, that’s the one that’s been scaled down. So, if we can get that one across the finish line we’ll be in great shape”.
And while the Commerce grants don’t expire until next June, the architect has already said we may be past the point where they can get the bid documents prepared in time. How concerned is King that it can be done? He told us, “Concerned…yes, but not panicked…yet. We can request an extension which we will likely need to do. As long as we have a viable project the extension should be granted, but there are no guarantees. We will also need to request a change to the FEMA grant in terms of allowable expenditures. Essentially, ask to be able to use those grant dollars for pre-construction related expenses. Costs have consistently escalated since the project’s inception.”
Watch this space. We’ll keep you posted on the progress.