By Malcolm Butler
During Monday night’s Lincoln Parish Police Jury meeting, one of the few agenda items was to award the low bid for some heating and cooling work that will be done at the parish detention center and library.
The HVAC projects are mostly being funded by grant money through the Louisiana Community Development Block Program (LCDBGP) although some of the funds will come from both the library and detention center.
“We had to fill out an application and the project had to meet certain criteria,” said Lincoln Parish Police Jury Administrator Courtney Hall. “The state decided to come out with one for HVAC, heating and cooling, because they thought air was contaminated in buildings. So this (grant) money could be used to basically clean the air to keep cases of Covid down. So we were fortunate to get (some funding) from the state for this.”
Hall said that $1.548 million was designated by the state for the projects, but that the low bid came back significantly higher.
“We got authorization to receive bids about 30 days ago,” said Hall. “We had $1.548 million available in grant money. The bids came in a $2.32 million, significantly more than we had available in grant money. The only way to get that additional money is to pull it out of the reserves.”
The low bid was from Byrnes Mechanical out of Monroe and Monday night that was awarded through a unanimous vote from the police jury. However, Hall said through some project engineering the cost of the projects is down to closer to $1.8 million.
“We have been talking with the project engineer and the mechanical engineer,” said Hall. “We have tried to make some adjustments to the scope of the project in order to get the cost down. We have been successful in that.”
According to Hall, the Lincoln Parish Library has agreed to pay for its part, which is around $165,000, out of its fund balance. And the Lincoln Parish Detention Center will pay for the overage of around $75,000 from its budget.
“We are at the point now that it’s going to be a shortfall of about $240,000,” said Hall. “The library has tentatively agreed to take their portion of the project and pay for it out of their pocket. It will still remain in the bid packet so it will still get done. And the detention center has agreed to pick up the difference in the fund balance so the project will be covered.”
Hall said the project comes at a great time for the detention center.
“That equipment out their is past its useful life already,” said Hall. “It’s a complete replacement/renovation of the heating and cooling for the detention center. There is some minor electrical work, some upgrades that need to be done. All that infrastructure as far as heating and cooling is so antiquated already. It can’t be adapted to the new type of compressors. So there is an electrical component. It’s going to thoroughly modernize what is out there. Everything is being held together with shoe string and band aids and duct tape. It couldn’t come at a better time.”
