County moving forward with renovating the Courthouse

We had a productive Commissioners Court meeting Tuesday (Feb 11). One of the items I was (only slightly) worried about was the approval of a Master Contract with McKinstry Ascension LLC design/build firm to start and eventually complete our much needed courthouse renovation project.

Several months back we went through the RFP/RFQ bidding process and our committee chose McKinstry, the firm that had also assisted us in trying to get a Texas Historical Commission grant to pay for the needed work. We did not succeed in getting the grant; there were truly other courthouses in Texas that are in much worse shape and nearing destruction. As bad as our mechanical systems are, we are not falling down.

I mentioned in the previous post that there are other grant eligible new projects that some of our officials are very interested in pursuing, and I am and have been worried about leaving our older, more legacy projects such as repairs to all of our facilities countywide, behind while new, non-essential projects are chased.

Yesterday’s commitment to obligate ourselves to fixing the courthouse in a comprehensive way was an excellent step towards making sure we’re putting the horse before the cart. Also mentioned was potentially adding additional projects including the County Annex (in Presidio) rebuild and the jail roof renovation to the scope of work under this same Master Agreement.

I must say I’m encouraged and relieved and now optimistic about moving forward in the right direction. There’s no question that the upcoming budget cycle this summer is going to be very difficult, and who knows what bad surprises the State Legislature has in store for Counties, but at least we are directly addressing these problems that have been too difficult for previous Commissioners Courts to tackle. I’ll have more info on how we plan to pay for this in the next blog.

Thanks for reading-

David