by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
For the second consecutive day, Mayor John Peyton urged supporters of a new Duval County Courthouse to weigh in against the protesting “radical fringe” who don’t want to discuss a building that costs a dime more than the original estimate.
The original budget of $190 million that became part of the Better Jacksonville Plan was way off the mark to begin with, Peyton told the Jacksonville Bankruptcy Bar Association Thursday. By using contingency fees, former mayor John Delaney got the budget bumped to $211 million.
Additional increases largely have been due to events beyond the City’s control, he said.
The four primary changes, said Peyton, are a community that’s growing faster than predicted, relocation fees of $30 million, additional safety measures as a result of Sept. 11 and escalating construction costs.
“It’s the right decision to get the courthouse off the river. But a very expensive decision,” he said.
When he first took office a year ago, Peyton vowed to the City Council that the courthouse would cost no more than $232 million.
“I said we’re going to stick to budgets, by God,” he told the Bankruptcy Bar members at Drayton’s in the Seminole Club. “I said that’s what we do in business — stick to budgets.
“I wish I’d never said that.”
An independent auditor told Peyton and his staff that a courthouse for $232 million is “completely undoable . . . way off the mark . . . a fake expectation.”
“That was a very tough day for me personally and my staff,” said Peyton. “Then it came down to, we can build it like this and shift the problem to the next mayor and the next Council. But we need to face the music and do what’s right.”
The new budget is $268 million.
The square-foot cost “is in line with other courthouses being built around the country,” and Council is considering Peyton’s request to “do it right,” he said.
However, he added, practically the only voices raised at Council meetings come from the “radical fringe.”
“These are people who go to every Council meeting and speak over and over again, beyond the level of productivity about projects they don’t like,” said Peyton. “They are pounding our Council members, who are hearing nothing from the folks who think this might be the right thing to do.”
As he did when making the same plea for support on Wednesday from the Jacksonville Bar Association, Peyton urged his audience of judges and lawyers to let Council members know they’re behind the project.
“This is a 100-year building,” he said, “and there’s a chance to do it right.”