by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
City Council member Lake Ray conceded there’s an outside chance he’s misreading the signs from his colleagues about the yo-yoing cost of the new Duval County Courthouse.
But don’t bet on it.
The courthouse, which started out as a $211 million project, then went to $282 million, is now estimated at $232 million.
The cost needs to go back to the original price and stay there, Ray told the Jacksonville Chapter of the Federal Bar Association during Tuesday’s meeting.
“The Council is not going to approve something for $232 million,” he said. “I just don’t believe that will happen.”
Ray, an engineer, said he also opposes the moratorium on all work that Council member Suzanne Jenkins planned to introduce at Tuesday night’s meeting.
“I’ve been in the construction industry long enough to know there’s a 30-day limit before the contract stops,” he said. “[Contractors] are going to really front load as much as possible.
“This isn’t the appropriate response.”
If the Council were to consider increasing the appropriation, the money would have to come from projects that are needed by more people.
“To take that out of drainage projects that affect the average citizen for a courthouse that the average citizen doesn’t want to go down to is not very high on the political radar screen,” he said.
The addition of property around the building and its increased size obviously affected the price, he said, “But I’m not really sure how we got there.”
The original design called for a building in the neighborhood of 600,000 square feet, Ray recalled.
“Then it became 850,000 square feet, including the renovation of the old federal courthouse,” he said. “It’s now grown to 1,100,000 square feet.
“I’m not sure who was watching, or managing this, but we’ve got something that’s darn near twice as big as it was to begin with.”
The appropriate response, Ray said, would not be for Council to suspend the work but to reaffirm the $211 million figure.
“This Council determines policy,” he said. “The mayor’s office is responsible for the administration of that policy. This is an administrative issue. We’ll let them deal with it.”
In another matter, Ray updated the chapter on the proposed Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), “this thing you’ve never heard of . . . that’s going to be very important to us.”
At the heart of ITS, he said, are “intelligent traffic signals,” which can reduce commuting time, help emergency vehicles respond to accidents, provide information about trouble spots in the road ahead . . . and keep motorists from having to idle at empty intersections at 3 in the morning.
Not only will ITS benefit commuters and communities, Ray said, it’s required.
“If we don’t do something with this system by 2005,” he said, “we won’t have federal funding for our highways.”
The impact on proposed bridge work and “extensions for some of our road systems” would be unacceptable, said Ray, adding, “We [City Council] are going to put together a plan to make this ITS happen.”
Ray also announced he would introduce an emergency resolution at Tuesday night’s Council meeting to block the Florida Committee of 100 from exporting fresh water from North Florida and shipping it to South Florida.
If the group of business operators is allowed to take fresh water out of the north, Ray said, salt water will eventually contaminate what is left behind in the aquifer. It may take five years, he said; it may take 20. But, sooner or later, “We will pay a very, very heavy price” to supply fresh water.
“We’re not shipping our water down there,” he said.