Restlessness is growing to begin the final design phase for the law enforcement center addition project, after weeks of discussion by the Guthrie County Board of Supervisors.

The Board approved the project manager contract with the Samuels Group at this week’s meeting, and tabled action on the agreement with Shive-Hattery Architecture and Engineering. County Attorney Brenna Bird presented some language changes and stated she thought architect Mike Lewis was going to change a sentence from the contract that mentioned if any required items would be omitted from the architect’s documentation, then the County would have to pay all costs to include that. Bird stated that she doesn’t want the County to pay more for someone else’s mistake, and Lewis acknowledged this suggestion, and stated he was not aware of a note for the change that was previously made.

The Board also asked why compensation had increased by $30,000 in the basic services section, which Lewis explained was to cover mechanical and electrical commissioning. Sid Samuels of the Samuels Group told the Board that this isn’t an increased expense, but rather cheaper than hiring a third party, “We’ve experienced the commissioning from two different perspectives. We’ve done it where we’ve utilized Shive’s engineering firm to do the commissioning at the end of a project which is required by the state and we’ve used a third party. And we’re currently using a third party on the Dallas County project and what we have found is that the third party is causing a lot of delay and it’s just not a very seamless process.”

County Facilities Manager Brandon Thompson agreed with hiring Shive Hattery’s engineering division to do the commission work. Samuels suggested whether the Supervisors could direct the architect firm to begin the final design phase pending the contract approval, so the County could move faster toward the construction bid process and take more advantage of the $8.7 million voter-approved bond. Bird stated they could hold a special meeting the next day to approve the architecture contract, which was scheduled, then later cancelled, for the item to appear on next week’s agenda.