Commissioners hire contract manager for jail construction

After interviewing four construction companies, a committee of five unanimously recommended that the Valley County commissioners hire Clausen & Sons of Havre to be the contract manager for the new county detention facility.

Clausen has done several large projects in Glasgow, including the Valley Event Center, the Evangelical Church and Prairie Ridge Village.
The commissioners hope the job can start when frost is gone in April and be finished in December.

According to Commissioner Dave Reinhardt, a contract manager works with the architect to come up with a design and guarantee a price for the building. They coordinate the subcontracting, although the commissioners can have some say in who is hired as a subcontractor. The contract manager can bid on the project. They have a person on the job at all times and take care of site security.

BusinessDictionary.com defines contract management as "administrative activities associated with handling of contracts, such as (1) invitation to bid, (2) bid evaluation, (3) award of contract, (4) contract implementation, (5) measurement of work completed, and (6) computation of payments. It also includes monitoring contract relationship, addressing related problems, incorporating necessary changes or modifications in the contract, ensuring both parties meet or exceed each other's expectations, and actively interacting with the contractor to achieve the contract's objective(s)."

The new facility will represent the end of a tortuous process to replace the old jail, which was built in 1976. Studies done in 1994 and 2004 found that the basement jail was deficient in many areas and represented a potential danger to inmates and a liability to the county. The jail lacks a secondary emergency exit; the cell door locks malfunction; there is no separate receiving entrance apart from the public and no secure center to control access. It has an obsolete linear design that does not facilitate effective supervision of inmates. There is limited capacity to separate various classes of inmates. There is no natural light and inadequate artificial light. The cells are undersized and there is no indoor or outdoor exercise area.

Beginning in 2005, the county undertook extensive assessments of the alternatives and their costs. A Jail Committee was formed in November 2005 and met many times until July 2006. They rejected the options of doing nothing and remodeling the 16-bed jail in the basement, and studied building a new one. They toured several new jails in Montana and Wyoming, and a manufacturer of modular cell pods in Peoria, Ill. They made a recommendation of 40 beds. Later that year they heard from a jail expert and for a time it looked like the solution was a big jail of 132 beds. It would be built with a lease-purchase financing plan that would pay for itself by boarding prisoners. A site next to the airport was picked out and pre-construction soil tests were done. However, the pressure of overcrowding at the state prison was alleviated by creating more community half-way facilities. In July 2007 the Montana attorney general issued an opinion (later overturned) that no out-of-state prisoners could be brought into Montana and the potential investors bowed out. The Hardin jail fiasco, where a 460-bed jail sits empty, put an end to any enthusiasm for a large boarding facility.

By March 2008, everyone was back to square one. The project assumed a low profile as the commissioners looked closer to home for another plan.
Mike Stevenson, the Miles City architect who was hired for the project in July 2009, has drafted a plan that includes 24 beds in three separate sections, so that prisoners may be segregated as needed (men, women, violent offenders, etc.) No juveniles will be housed in this jail. The dispatch center will be moved to the new building, but the law enforcement offices will remain in the courthouse.

The commissioners will not ask for a bond issue or an increase in taxes for this project. Reinhardt said that the county has been saving up the payment in lieu of taxes checks (PILT) for some time, and when they receive another one they will have enough to pay the estimated $2.5 to $2.7 million cost. The $200,000 in stimulus funds that the county received will just about cover the architect's fee.

"The contractors say we hit the perfect time," Reinhardt said Tuesday. "Building is down and they are ready to work."