by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
City Council member Suzanne Jenkins wants to stop rumors that a resolution urging Mayor John Peyton to suspend design work on the new Duval County Courthouse will cost the City millions of dollars. The legislation was introduced at the last Council meeting two weeks ago.
“It’s completely false,” said Jenkins. “I would never introduce something that’s going to waste that kind of money. I don’t know why people are trying to spin it this way, but it’s a lie. It’s not right and I want the truth out there.”
Talk of a $50,000-a-day shortfall as a result of a construction halt began circulating after fellow Council member Kevin Hyde distributed a possible substitute to Jenkins’ resolution.
In his bill, Hyde made provisions for Mayor John Peyton to ensure the budget for the courthouse would not exceed the $211 million currently budgeted for the project. If the project were to go over budget, a specific dollar amount and scope of work needed for completion would have to come before the Council. There is no mention of any design or construction suspension.
“That’s not acceptable to me,” said Jenkins. “His doesn’t even really do anything other than maintain the status quo.”
Jenkins, who drafted the resolution that is currently under review in the Council’s Audit, Finance and Public Health, Safety & Utilities committees, said there won’t be any demobilization costs as a result of her proposal.
“When I was working with the Council auditors and the general counsel on this, I wanted to make it very clear that this would only affect the design end of it. That’s what I want to suspend,” said Jenkins. “I was assured that anything less than 50 percent wouldn’t require any demobilization costs and that’s what we worked from. People are choosing to read it incorrectly, but I told the mayor’s office exactly what I was going to do.”
Currently, design work on the courthouse is about 30 percent complete.
“They can continue all of the site preparation that they want to,” said Jenkins. “We know it’s going to be built there no matter what it looks like.”
Cindy Laquidara of the General Counsel’s Office, confirmed that, legally, it is an option to suspend design work on the courthouse and added that Jenkins’ legislation would not incur any demobilization costs if passed.
“However, any additional fees that might come up as a result of design suspension has been a topic of discussion,” said Laquidara. “Unfortunately, I don’t possess the skill sets to answer that.”
Penalties or not, mayor’s office spokesperson Susie Wiles said the mayor’s office is not comfortable with the resolution.
“While there are no penalties, per se, as a result of halting our design work, and it is possible to do so,” said Wiles, “it’s not an optimal condition for us to work with. Ideally the site design work, the demolition and the site clearing would all go hand-in-hand. The best thing would be to move forward on this project without slowing down the process anymore than it has to be and I can say that this is not the way the mayor wishes to proceed on this.
“What will we save the taxpayers by suspending the design work? I don’t know.”