Bight Board delays City Hall budget transfer
Bight Board delays giving city $1.3 million to fund new City Hall budget gap
BY PRU SOWERS
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
The Key West Bight District Management Board is taking its time deciding whether to bail the city out of the financial hole the new city hall construction project is digging into the municipal budget.
Bight board members agreed March 11 to postpone a vote giving $1.3 million to partially fund the budget shortfall for the new Key West City Hall at Glynn Archer School. Bight Board President Michael Knowles said the decision to delay the vote was to give a 20-day, instead of the usual 10-day, agenda notice since the money transfer involves amending the board’s already-approved budget. Knowles also wants additional time to investigate the Bight Board charter – which sets out how the board manages the Old town Historic Seaport – to determine whether the revenue collected from tenants at the Seaport belongs to the city, which owns the Seaport property, or to the Bight Board for use on area maintenance.
“If it’s the city’s money, then we owe it to the city. If it’s city revenue, then how much say do we have over it,” Knowles said after the meeting. “If it’s not the city’s money, then it’s a whole different subject. Then legal comes in and says what you can and can’t do.”
Bight Board members will take up the matter at their April 15 meeting. Public comments can be made at that time.
The bill for the new City Hall has steadily increased since architect Bert Bender told city commissioners in May 2014 that the cost to convert the former elementary school building into a state of the art, energy efficient city hall including furniture, would be $15.5 million. Bender told commissioners that his initial estimate was based on a cost calculation given by a construction consultant.
But that estimate turned out to be $1.8 million under actual costs after commissioners accepted the lowest of three construction bids last November. Burke Construction’s bid of $14,997,000 brought the total project cost up to $17.2 million after adding Bender’s $1.7 million architect’s fee and $483,610 in demolition costs. City officials set aside that amount of money in the fiscal year 2015 city budget.
But costs have continued to increase, led by the recent addition of a $500,000 contingency fee to the budget, a standard practice for construction projects to cover unforeseen costs; and approximately $150,000 for Art in Public Places, which requires some construction projects in Key West to donate one percent of the total project cost to the fund.
Those additional costs have brought the current City Hall project total to $18.7 million, creating a $1.553 million project shortfall, one that city officials are counting on the Bight Board to solve. After applying some surplus funds from previous municipal projects that came in under budget, the city has asked the Bight Board to give up $1.3 million of its reserve fund.
“This would be a budget transfer and not a loan,” wrote Doug Bradshaw, Port and Marine Services Director, in a memo to Bight Board members. “ If the budget transfer occurs it will leave the Key West Bight reserve fund with approximately $4,861,754. It will not affect all currently funded projects in the Key West Bight or funded budget items.”
In addition to covering the half-million-dollar contingency fee and the Art in Public Places donation, the transfer from the Bight Board would pay for $757,000 in office furnishings and equipment, a cost originally included in Bender’s initial estimate.
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One wonders why a “new” city was needed. Surely the millions that would have been saved by renovation on the Angela St. facilities could have been more wisely used; then again, wisdom and city hall activities seem to be opposite ends of the spectrum.