 The committee of the whole is called to order. Thank you for coming here tonight and a happy Halloween everybody. Would you call the roll please? Bowman. Here. Beaver. Here. Ebert. Here. Serda. Here. Davis. Here. Excuse me. Raph is here. Kittleson. Here. Manning. Here. Meyer. Here. Montemarro. Here. Radke. Here. Seagaling. Here. Stefan. Excuse. Van Akron. Here. Vanderwee Lee. Excuse. Thirteen are present, a quorum is present. Thank you, Alderman Graf. Agenda item number two, we're going to forego for right now because I don't have the minutes. Agenda item number three, RC number 2690506 by finance agenda item 1471. Your committee to whom was referred RO number 3150506 by the city plan commission and resolution number 1360506 by Alderperson Graf, Manny and Sushia approving the revised capital improvements program recommended by the capital improvements commission for the program period 2006-2010 and adopting the 2006 program for implementation recommends that the program be amended to fund the police facility at $7 million in 2007 and city hall remodeling at $3 million in 2007 and approve as amended. Alderman Graf. Madam Chairperson, I would move it this time that the RC be accepted and adopted and that the resolution be put upon its passage. Are there a second? Second. It's been moved and approved, moved and seconded. The RC 2690506 be approved as amended. Discussion. I was wondering if maybe Rich, could you address us first? I see you've given us a handout and we'd like to hear your information about money. Thank you. Thank you. I guess I'll just briefly go over the main points of what I tried to put in the two pages. If the committee and the council decide to issue the bonds for the police facility in 2006, there will be additional increases in the tax levies for 2006 and 2007 budgets. And there will be additional operating costs incurred when the building is completed in 2007. Issuing the police facility bonds in 2006 will increase the tax levy by half percent, up to four and a half percent for the 2006 budget. This would fund four months of interest from June 2006 to October 2006. Issuing the police facility bonds in 2006 would increase the tax levy about one percent for the 2007 budget and bring the tax levy increase for that year to approximately 5.4 percent. The major concern is the 2007 operating budget. Under the state tax levy limit, the council will not be able to increase the tax levy more than two percent for all operational cost increases for the 2007 budget. A two percent increase in the tax levy for the general fund would be approximately $277,000. With other anticipated revenue decreases, there'll be no growth in revenues for the old seven budget. The general fund would incur mandatory expenditure increases including step and longevity wage increases, health plan increases, and utility and energy increases. If the construction of the police facility begins in June 2006 and is completed in the following June, the council will have to provide for one half of the anticipated annual utilities and maintenance costs of $464,000 within the 2007 budget. The increase in the operational cost for the police facility needs a determined source of recurring funding before we can make a commitment for construction or it'll mean that our services and current employees will need to be reduced in 2007. Are there any questions? Mr. Gephardt, after all that information, what is your recommendation about when we should do the bonding? Because that's what you're talking about, right? I guess there are a couple of elements in here. One is the timing of the debt issuance, the other is the timing of the construction. Normally they go hand in hand at the same time. There are some other options that could be done within locking into some of the debt versus the construction time, but that's not our normal process, our usual process is after we receive the bids in that we know the exact amount of the contract or for a large project like this, you wanna know what your bids are so you don't borrow too much or too little. And then the month following, you have the bids that you would issue the debt. But I guess as far as my recommendation is, I guess my, as I said, you're emphasizing that my main concern right now is the 2007 operating budget. If we were to wait a portion of a year to start this at the beginning of old seven, then we would not have the additional operating cost in old seven. So I guess my recommendation would be the same as the finance committee's recommendation at this point. Thank you, Mr. Gephard. Alderman Dan Burke. We got a million set aside already for the pre-separation, right? There is available for in funding, yes. If we could start in June 206, why isn't it possible to borrow half of that seven million to get the project in gear and instead of, say we borrowed four million, then in 207 instead of 12,700,000, we'd only have to borrow eight million if we would borrow the four million for 206. The problem comes in when you, the council lets a contract to the construction company for building the new police facility. And I would assume it'll be around the $7 million area. We would have to provide that funding before we can let that contract. So we have to have those funds available to us before we can sign that contract because that's one of the elements on there that we do have provided for the funding to pay for the construction. I think it would be difficult, I guess I would might have to turn to others on it, but we have in some cases split some of the projects. In this case, we could do it between the remodeling of city hall and the new building. I mean, those two functions could be split, but I think it would be very difficult to hand a contract to a contractor and said this is half a contract, build a half of a building for us. You know, we would have to have the full money to let the contract for the full building. Thank you, Mr. Gephart. Thank you. I got one more. On the ratings here, it says the police department number one, city parks number three, but we're ready to go ahead in 206 to borrow 125,000 and I guess 400,000 out of block grant money. That's almost a half a million dollars just for parks. And if that's gonna happen, then in your DPW budget, you better put $30,000, $40,000 for all the damages that are done to the city parks because right now there's a lot of damage done to these city parks. Mr. Savanash, about, because why talk about borrowing money in 206 if we have to find out his timeline? Before we talk to Mr. Savanash, I see that Alderman Sigali would like to ask one question or do you wanna ask it after we talk to Mr. Savanash? I'd like to ask it now. Mr. Rich, now Alderman Burke said we had a million dollars put away. Okay, now you said we have some funds available. Are you saying it's less than a million dollars? No, I didn't. Because I've seen in the paper like 290,000. Now if that's the case, where is the rest of the money? The money has been provided in the capital project fund for most of that funding. We do have a contract obviously with Zimmerman as part of that. There is also a council has reserved 550,000 of the general fund fund balance that is reserved for the project but has not been appropriated yet. But otherwise it's in the capital project fund at this point. And if you wanna ask it, now if you wanna wait in your place to serve it. Alderman Manning. Thank you Madam Chair. Simple detail, the operational cost estimate for 2007 at $464,000 in change is based on the square foot of what size building? I think that was, well that was the full annual cost that we want to be half of that that would be probably incurred in 07. But that was for what they had requested in the capital improvements program. And I might have to turn to Mr. Sabanation. Is that 65,000 square feet? When they first were looking at this in, you remember Al? Was this based on the 80,000 square foot building, the original, is it $464,000 operating cost? It may have been, I'm not sure the square footage. It was the, I know the police department had looked at other buildings for recently constructed similar facilities in the state. And they kind of took an average of those facilities of what it would take to, for utilities and maintenance. And does that answer your question? I don't realize that it's not very precise, but it's what we have right now to go by. All in service, something forward together. Thank you Madam Chair. I look at these numbers and I'm wondering sometimes if we're working ourselves backwards. You've outlined for us that there could be a shortfall of operational costs for this new facility of $464,420. I guess I'm waiting for a suggestion on how to make that work. To me it seems that we have a bill coming due and whether we like it or not, we're gonna have to pay that bill just by putting it off. I have no answers here in front of me on how we're still gonna do this, but yet this council has decided that we're going to make a police station a priority. We need to see some numbers on how to make that work. You've outlined here that services, cuts for services or current employees, what is your projection in terms of, because I'm sure you had to outline how many positions we're gonna have to cut in order to meet this shortfall and how much is that? Well, again, it would be half of that amount for all seven would be impacted about two months. That's just for one year, correct? So we're looking at like two months. For half of a year, yes. So how many positions are we looking at? For 230,000 from the, while we've gauged in the past, it would probably be five people. And then for each additional year and going into then the following year, 464, so then more people then? And again, right now, no one really knows what's gonna happen in 2008. We don't have anything from the state as far as our legislation that's gonna impact municipalities, whether there be levy limits, whether there be any funding increases or decreases and shared revenues. We really don't know beyond that. Do you see similarities in other municipalities where they're putting off capital improvement projects because of similar revenue issues that this is, because I foresee with these numbers that we don't have room to do anything in the future. Right now under the state constraints, a lot of communities are very concerned. Some of them are looking at Laos 406. I cannot really speak for their capital projects. Sometimes we exchange comments or emails in reference to the operating budget, but I have not really heard about their capital project levels. And lastly, just with the $1.7 million that we'll be spending and increases on parks, have you equated that to, and maybe Tom Holton could help also, as how much we're gonna need an additional employee support for these parks now with the new additions and stuff? I would have to turn to Tom on that. The improvements for the parks are basically replacement of existing restroom facilities, so there wouldn't know at Cleveland Park, at Vets Park, repair, work at Qantas Park, replacing King Park, so there aren't any new structures other than the splash pad at End Park, which really, that's not gonna be anything of high maintenance, so I guess what I'm saying is there wouldn't be any requests for additional employees of those new facilities. Actually, it's probably saved us some money with the new equipment. Okay, so we're saying that at End Park we're gonna be putting in a splash pad, or I just have some concerns, I guess I would use the analogy that it makes sense to borrow for a home, borrowing money for a home, but not necessarily borrowing money for a swing set in the backyard. I perceive that as a want, not necessarily a necessity. We've already outlined some money from the community block grants, which makes sense because we are improving our parks, but to borrow money, that's where I have some concerns considering the information that was just told to us. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Alderman Serta. Alderman Elgin-Burke. Yes, thank you, Madam Chairman. And I'm understanding that your assessment correctly, we know what the next two years are going to be in terms of bumping up against the levee limit. The only way around that, however, would be to go to referenda, now is referenda for bonding only or can we go to referenda for operational costs? Because again, the levee limit is comprised of a number of things. Yes, I believe that legislation does allow for you to go to referenda for operating costs, but the timing of it is a little bit difficult to know what your total cost is and then to get it into an election. But because we basically are putting the budgets together in the fall and generally we have a spring election, we may have a fall election in the whole six, but. So, yes, I think that is an alternative that the legislation does provide. The unfortunate, the decision we need to make is by November so that you can put a budget together and roll that up and do that. I guess the second question, do you have any sense of what an economic model would be for 2008, 2009? Because one of the thoughts is, right now we're bumping up against a number of unknowns. In other words, a meet our law that may rule in favor of the unions and thus require us to either, if you would find additional money or lay off a significant amount of staff, and also perhaps unknown operating costs in terms of energy and things like that. Is there anything that you have that senses that I guess are you an optimist or a pessimist starting on 11 2008? I guess I'm always a pessimist, but I gotta be honest at that point, right? That's always the conservative approach, but I guess just knowing that what we've been hearing from Madison, we got the race between for the governor coming up, I'd assume both sides will be saying, continue to be saying no new taxes or tax restraints. So I assume the dialogue is not gonna change too much in Madison. It's a question yet, whether they're gonna try for Tabor or whether it's gonna be within the state statute, but I would assume there will probably see some restraints. I think going back into the 70s or so in Wisconsin, there is, they had a level of tax limits and restraints and they lasted about eight years. So if that's any gauge to go by. I, if I may insert in here, did find a reference in here in the Kaplan improvements program in the description for the, from the police department reference to the maintenance that they were looking at other facilities such as Oak Creek that was at 60,000 square feet. And they kind of ratio that to a department of for Sheboygan of 80,000 square feet. And so they put in $290,000 for utilities and maintenance repairs. And then also another 174,000 for three maintenance personnel. And of course, we might be able to cut back on a maintenance personnel if it's adjacent to City Hall, but also maybe the utilities might be going up with the energy situation. So you may have some offsets there. Thank you, Mr. Gappard. Mr. Berg, does that answer your questions? Alderman Berg, thank you so much. Alderman Radke and then perhaps we can go on to Mr. Sabanich. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. We're sitting here talking about swing sets. We're talking about all kinds of neat little things and Alderman Berg just brought up a very good word. It's called unknown. The biggest unknown we have here today is how much is this thing going to cost us? Does anybody know how much this package is gonna cost? Is there any plans and paper? I mean, we're sitting here tossing about all these numbers, but nobody has said what this thing is gonna cost. There's no plan on the table. So let's quit wasting time and get to the bottom of this thing. Thank you, Alderman Radke. Alderman Graf. Thank you. I agree with what Alderman Radke said, and that's one of the reasons if we move into 2007, the capital improvements for 2007 will be worked on all next year during 2006. The new capital improvements commission will be voting on what is needed in there once they get the figures and the drawings or whatever we need from Zimmerman and associates to do this police facility. And I agree we should probably move on to Mr. Sabinash if he's ready to give us some information. I hope that he will be able to. Thank you, Alderman Graf. Mr. Sabinash, thank you for being here. My pleasure. I think that one of the questions that had come to fruition over the preceding months was a question of duration and schedule. And so today I came to hopefully address those questions as the committee sees fit to proceed with the project. I wanted to talk at the outset about some architectural terminology so that I think everybody will hopefully understand how we as architects proceed with the design of a building. There are distinct phases that are written into our contract which are common within the industry. The first phase that I wanna talk about and give you a framework of a schematic design and what schematic design is. Schematic design is the idea phase. It's the time when all ideas are provided and as many options that exist are considered by the owner to facilitate the best design possible. The phase that follows that is called design development. That's what I would refer to as the reality phase. That's when the engineers start working intensively on the project and they start imposing their will upon the design. So they'll help us to make sure that ductwork is sized adequately that ductwork work crosses beams and so forth has been taken into account. The next phase is construction documents as the time when we make very few changes to the design will enhance what's there but will generally keep the footprint of the building uniform. I'll be working on putting as much information on paper so that the contractors who are pricing the project in question have as much information available to them so that they're all bidding on the same work and it's that point that we have a major release of the documents. That timeframe that I've described has always been envisioned as about seven months. From the time we go ahead to begin reconsidering where we are in terms of the design it would take us about seven months to get to the point where we're ready to go out on the street and solicit bids from contractors. It's likely that the bidding phase which would follow the construction administration phase would take about a month to two months. In the ideal sense probably about a month to bid and a month to mobilize and get contracts in place and that that would be followed dependent upon the time of the year that that entire process culminated by the construction administration phase of our contract. More importantly for the city it's the time when the contractor is feverishly working to build the project that we've identified in the construction documents. That will have variation in it again depending on the year. If we looked at the time where we sit now and said well where would we be if we proceed into the next budgeting process maybe into November get approval around Thanksgiving well where does that seven months fall? The seven months if we begin at December 1st would go until June of 2006 and if we say it's about a month, month to mobilize, month to bid that we get a starting in earnest with a contractor on site in September. If somebody said can you improve on that schedule? The answer would be yes but within limits. I can't lop off five months but I could maybe look at five weeks. I could look at two weeks but you'd be realistically looking at a project that started construction around Labor Day of 2006. The alternatives that were discussed were if you started in 2007 and the contractor began working in 2007 then we would work backwards which is one of the ways that Rich had described you. You work from a finite deadline and then you add your time in front rather than adding the time at the back and seeing where you end up. There are certain strategic advantages to that. If we start in September 1st that's not, we're really knocking on the door of winter at the beginning of September. And so the question that I would have is have we compressed the ability or have we provided the ability for the contractor to compress his schedule so that we're not bearing undue costs for winter construction if we didn't have to and are we making the contractor accelerate his process to where we pay a premium? We would probably like to avoid both. Realistically work back from a 2007 start timeframe. We had the project basically starting up in the first quarter of 2007 in March of that year. We would be bidding at the tail end of 2006 and then starting construction in the early part of 2007, January, February. We see some strategic advantages in that and that if the contractor's able to get access to the site the very beginning of 2007 it's likely that they could complete the construction within a year. Our thought on September as the starting point leads us to a conclusion that it's more likely that it would take 12 to 14 months to build the project. They're just not gonna be as good at building in November, December of 2006 as they will be when they have access to the good weather that comes with the spring. So we think that although the timeframes are fairly close that it's likely we can probably compress the construction duration that's good for you because you pay less for general conditions. And there's really not that much of a differential if we're talking about a January 1st or a February 1st versus a September 1st. We see those timeframes as being very close. So then when we look at how much time that you would like to have with committees and review of the project it seems likely that beginning next year and planning the project seems to make some sense. And if it fits your fiscal requirements then that seems to make sense on two fronts. She was very clear, I thank you so much. Does the council have any questions? Odin Sagali. Thank you, Madam Chair. If you could answer this question that's part of Rich's, it says in reference to inflationary costs you, Mr. Sabin, I should expect cost increases for construction for 2006 to 2007 to be around 7% and with letting contracts in early 2007 we'd be losing six month inflation and cut 7% to 3.5%. Can we be sure of that? Well, I wish my crystal ball was that good because I probably would be on Wall Street. It's not, I can say this, when we generated the cost related to the project we used $2006. So the project as it's currently formulated in terms of construction cost and other project cost is a 2006 number. I would agree that if you started the project and there is a lot of debate in the office and within the contracting industry that we pulled to try to determine what that inflation cost was going to be. The general feeling was we've gone through a number of different heart spikes and medium spikes within the industry and the construction industry has traditionally had adjustments in certain time frames but it has generally been a stable inflationary environment in most cases. There are certain, if a hurricane goes through Florida and the price of plywood goes up, the industry's always been fairly good at absorbing those incidents. But what it tends to do is it tends to go ahead at a fairly stable or fairly low inflation cycle and then it'll just spike. And it seems that most of the products that we've encountered to date have just been absorbed into the latest spike which is about a three-year spike which is generally longer than most of the spikes we've seen in the industry. And so when the contractors we talked to looked at it they said it's probably more like 5% but the consumer price index is about two and a half if you wanted to cover yourself say seven and so we did that because we don't know and we're using all of our tools to try to determine what that is but again it's a forecast and people who forecast something other than about 10% two years ago were wrong. So we have that caution. As it relates to the inflation it is correct that if you start and a project is six months ahead of the other that the thing to be aware of is that you are really taking half a year of inflation out of the project equation. And so if the forecast were correct and seven were the right number theoretically six month duration would save you about 3% across the cost of the project. I don't know that the six month is actually correct based on where we currently sit. I think it's closer to four months, September to January rather than six months but again we could potentially look at ways to improve on the 2007 schedule. If there was a 2006 schedule which was the early start schedule in the 2007 there are ways because we're dealing with a whole year that we could look at accelerating that schedule to get you into the timeframe you're looking for. I would still suggest that what we're trying to avoid is a contractor holding a bid for an extended duration. I don't wanna get into 90, 120 day holds on their bid. So I'd like to keep the start date as close as possible to the bid date because again anytime you put 90 and 100 day limits onto bid or qualify bids in that way the natural tendency in the industry is to charge a little more than they would otherwise. So I look at the current schedule and say maybe it's closer to five or four months of difference and what you have to consider is it's a forecast of what the industry thinks inflation is gonna be and those are, they're not always correct. Even from contractors. We use contractors a lot to verify our assumptions and they hedge their bets as well as ourselves. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Segali does that answer your question? Sure does. Thank you. Alderman Dan Byrd. You read yourself now. Mr. Savanage. You would be comfortable and more relaxed with starting in the spring of 207. Like you said, that would give you time to work with bids and all that stuff. Well, we're dealing with a complex project. Right. So the more time that we have as part of the planning process, the more latitude we have that as I've said before, we work within timeframes but there are times that as a designer, sometimes it just isn't working and you have to go back to the drawing board and you go back and you go back and you go back and so there is certainly more time built in the second timeframe to cover if something isn't working that there's time in the schedule to address it. Whereas if you started immediately and said, boy, I gotta be out in June. There's less latitude in that schedule to deal with what if it just isn't working for some reason and now if I lose two weeks, now the schedule starts to drive pretty heavily what happens on the design. We don't wanna ignore the schedule but it certainly would be more comfortable if within the schedule there was latitude to deal with administrative protocols that we haven't really covered yet. What if something just isn't working as a designer and you gotta start working on the weekends to make sure when you bring something back on Tuesday to be viewed, it works. I think that the one schedule has more latitude and the other has less. But from my own perspective, it's not so much that one has more time in it, it's that I don't think the first schedule gets you out when you should be out. It's a weird time. To be starting in September is not only it hasn't been done, contractors work in bad weather all the time. This is Wisconsin. But the guy pouring concrete and the Mason who's out on site who's working with gloves on just isn't as productive as the guy who's working in March and April. I've said this before. I wish that there was a formula that showed everything but sometimes things just seem more appropriate when you view them using the little voice in the back of your head. And September's just an awkward time to be starting a project. Okay. Aldenberg, does that answer your question? Like I say, I was all for pushing for 206. But if he, he's the man we hired and he's more comfortable with the 207, then I will go along with the 207 as much as I don't like to. But he makes a lot of sense because like I said, I was in the building trades for 15 years and I know where he's coming from. So I won't push 206 anymore because I'm sick of button heads. Thank you, Aldenberg. Alderman Stephan. Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the other questions and maybe it's, we're just not aware. I know there's your meeting behind the scenes with people. The concern I had with pushing it to 2006 was I wasn't comfortable knowing that $7 million was the magic number. Nobody ever told us that what we were gonna get for a $7 million. I was on the finance committee six months ago when you said, here's 18 million. And granted that included some stuff that we've probably cut out now. And I guess whether it's 2006 or 2007, do you have a feeling yet whether $7 million builds what we need for a police station because a lot was made of Jamesville and they're five million and everybody said, well, that really doesn't count because it's only good for 10 years. I don't wanna be here in 10 years again if we build a $7 million police station. I guess just like your comments on that. Well, we haven't looked at a $7 million solution. And I think that that merits a lot of conversation with the men who carry the weapons that are in this room. We haven't had that yet. If the council deemed it appropriate that that was the funding level, that would be the first thing we would talk about is how do you skin a $7 million cat? And if it came back that there were problems programmatically or for whatever reason, then we would bring it back to whatever authority existed to return that information to, to talk about the things that were either significant sacrifices or significant problems to try to come up with a solution to them. But it would be there. That's a significantly different number. So there would be significant changes. And there again, 2007 allows more conversation, more time to make those, to see what we get for seven, what we get for 10, what we get for 13, whatever the case is. Yes. Thank you, Alderman Steffen. Alderman Graf. Thank you. I was just gonna mention exactly what you said. If we, if we do it in 2007, we have another year of capital improvements to look at it and to advise. But also it's really the million dollars that we had or that we have plus the $7 million dollars. You're looking at eight million or eight and a half million if you include the, the, the contract that we've already let and so forth. So we can always make that adjustment in 2006, 2004, 2007. Thank you, Alderman Graf. Alderman Serda. Thank you, Madam Chair. I can see the, I can see one advantage though in starting in 2006 as far as in terms of the conservative schedule. Because if there's one thing I've been told over and over and reiterated is that typically when you set a date in certain deadlines, they're usually exceeded because construction at times can be unknown on foreseen. So by using the conservative schedule, we could still be pushing things out. Whereas going in 2007, we have more flex time but still again, there's no guarantees. I know in the report it had mentioned underpinning of this current structure and that there's a lot of unforeseen costs with that and it can be very difficult when starting and stopping with that. So again, this could get longer and longer. And I was also wondering if you could clarify the construction schedule. In 2006, we're looking at possibly winter. In 2007, you mentioned January and February. There doesn't seem to be a real difference there in terms of Wisconsin's weather. Well, I had in the, the formula that I used, I had mobilization in January, start of construction in February. Seeing as we have some demolition, February is a okay month for demo. You're really keeping your fingers crossed that we don't have a brutal winter but March is not a horrible time to begin excavation. You could, if we have a really cold winter, it could get delayed. There's no doubt about that. But philosophically, it would impact the project under construction probably more acutely. What we would love to be able to say is that when you already have the contractor on site, well, when you already have the contractor on site, the natural tendencies, you're probably going to pay more for those delays than if it happened early in the schedule because they've made other commitments for manpower and other project sites and the like. The thing that I look at relative to the schedule is if we're straddling winter at the time when it's critical, and I'm looking at a September start, my construction is 12 to 14 months. In concept, if I can accelerate the construction on the latter project, the two months difference in that construction schedule really makes a big difference. I mean, general conditions on a project of this magnitude can be 50 to $100,000 for a couple of months for job trailer, project management, project superintendent, insurance, et cetera. So the idea is can you avoid, in concept, having the, and aside from my feed, this is a major capital expenditure. If you can compress that construction schedule, if you can consolidate and get good bids, that's where you're going to save the most money. And so if I have a 14 month construction duration and I can potentially cut it to 12 months, even potentially 10, Janesville is built in 10 months, that's going to save you more money than you'd probably see just by accelerating the schedule. Sometimes you can accelerate the schedule so much that you get into a strange time and you don't actually save yourself any money by the end of the effort. So you could potentially, September, October, November, you see, I mean, there's almost a four month differential. If you took the pessimistic viewpoint and said 14 months on the more aggressive schedule and we had a good winter, you could potentially see a 10 month construction on the other project and that four months actually disappeared. You finished at the same point in that schedule. So I can always say that as an architect, it's always better if you have more time in the schedule to do design because it leaves you the ability to address unforeseen issues. But you still have to be respectful of the schedule. If the schedule tends to go on at Infinitum as an architect, I don't do well from a profitability standpoint and I do want to do well. But I also want to be able to control not only the architecture schedule, but I want to control the construction schedule. And I think that you're also playing within that timeframe the opportunity that exists by bidding a project at the end of the year. Contractors are looking for backlog. This will be a big project. Contractor wants to have a nice 2007, it's going to be very competitive in that marketplace at the end of the year. And again, that September timeframe is just, it's an awkward timeframe. I can't get enclosed. I can't get a roof on. I can't achieve the things that I would normally be trying to achieve within the schedule. You're not going to fail in a September construction duration, but I don't know that I've maximized the value of the contractor by condensing his time. One thing just to reiterate too, by using the conservative schedule in 2006, we do a lot. It could work to our favor that if there is an unforeseen problem at this site that we are pushing that off, that is one benefit. Typically when using a conservative schedule, it's helpful in terms of the costs versus allotting for more flex time. Well, I need to make sure that I've got enough time in to do the best construction documents that I can. The better the construction documents, the more likely that we're going to have contractors are bidding the same work and the more competitive they'll be. So the way I view our schedule, it's a project you're going to be living in for a long, long time. I don't necessarily want to rush our schedule just to do that. I have to be respectful of that schedule again, but I want to do a good design. I want to do the design that works. It would be unfortunate if as a result of a bad design that was rushed, the police department had to hire four more people. I mean, think about what that cost is over the duration of a project or they're 5% less efficient as an organization. Those are bad things to do and that's what we're trying to avoid by having adequate planning time at the outset and then also again, strategically positioning your project so that it is highly desirable to the contracting entities of the world is also important. And I fully respect that given that September date, but if there was a potential, maybe you had to go back and rework something during you said the schedule phase. It allots for that time to give you a more time and then pushes it off into maybe pretty similar to January, February. And there is a finite stop time in the schedule as it's currently devised. I mean, we're working with that seven month block. You could say, well, I really want to start. I'm not so concerned with when you finish, but I really want to start. I mean, I could start tomorrow. I could get done with my planning phase and the project can sit until the time that it's strategically appropriate to be released. So there is latitude in the definition of how the work could proceed so that, again, it's placed appropriately in the marketplace. And if there was a time to stop, it's just before bidding. You can sit in my drawer for a couple of months and it certainly hurts nobody by having that intellectual property sitting in a drawer if it's so desired and that's a possibility. If you said, I really want to start, we could start, but I don't want to extend seven months into nine months or 10 months because I don't know that you're going to get value out of that. Thank you, Mr. Sabanash. Thank you, Alderman Sarada. Alderman Eldenburg. Yes, thank you, Madam Chairman. I guess I'm very much appreciative of both Mr. Gebhardt and Mr. Sabanash. I think you've made some very clear and convincing arguments for waiting and I think you both would be horrible timeshare salesman because I walked in tonight feeling like there was going to be some level of pressure to make a decision and I think you've argued very effectively for your position of taking some time and designing the best station rather than having a slap a $7 million price tag on it and have you go from there. However, that being said, are there some reasonable costs that we know we are going to incur that could be placed in say 2006? One thing I think of if we demolish the police garage, you're going to have to have some place for the squad cars. Well, I know that that's going to be part of your program development. One thought would be if we can quickly make a decision is the footprint large enough to accommodate fleet services or are we better off looking, for example, at relocating fleet services at the Municipal Service Building where I think construction costs would be significantly lower? We know we're going to have to put the fleet someplace. We know that we have to be ready for that sometime in early 2007. I guess are those realistic discussions to have that could assist us or allow us to, if you would start some of the project now knowing they're going to be costs that are incurred in the future? Yes, I would tend to say that as part of the evolution of the project budget, those kinds of discussions are going to be had with the police department to determine what's going to be included in the project and what won't. I would add that because I think I need to. I don't want somebody else coming in to say this. We could go through more exotic methods of delivering the project than we're talking about. We could do bid pages for footings and foundations and the like and accelerate all of the schedules in place. In most instances, municipalities don't want to do that because there are more uncertainties that are coming after commitments have been made in construction dollars, but there are ways to accelerate the construction side. It's just that more often than not, I find municipalities want to know what the total cost is, not that the footing and foundation package seems to be in line and then they hit with a, the fourth bid package down the line and find out that their budget has a problem. So most of the time we're talking about a single prime bid and that's the scenario that I painted out was how do you get a contractor, a person that you will contract with to provide all of the building services? But again, if you said there were specific criteria that dictated that you accelerate the construction schedule, there are mechanisms to do that. I don't want to make it seem that there's only one way to deliver it. There are more than one way to deliver a project like this. And I think, you know, along with that, there's relocation of the fleet and the impact if you would on police and city hall operations, if you're opening ground in November and December, because obviously sooner or later you're going to, you know, have to attach it to this building. And I guess there's some question on how, and again, those are design questions, but how are we going to, if you would run the business of government during the time you've got backhose and all the other things that are digging up our back lot? And I trust you've had some experience with that and we have some thoughts on that. It will be, staging the project will be a particular concern, especially for contractors who are dealing on fairly restrictive sites. They'll be looking for laydown space. They'll be looking for employee parking, aside from your own parking needs and the needs of the downtown as a whole. So there will be particular challenges. They'll have to be overcome on the site, but given the magnitude of the project, you'll be dealing with a certain sophistication level of the contractors who'll be working on it. And most of those contractors have dealt with those types of issues before. Thank you, Mr. Aldenberg. Alderman Aldenberg. Mark Alderman-Sagali. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two questions. First of all, we just got word tonight through someone that there is some design going through the internet concerning the new police station. Did that come from you so that we make everybody know if they come on the internet, whether that design was from you or not? We haven't started the design of the project on this site. So whatever is out there, does not have my fingerprints on it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Sagali. Finance committee. Okay, supposedly we have a million dollars here set aside for this initially. Now, whether we do or not doesn't, I never got an answer to that. But when it comes down to the idea phase and design development, et cetera, do we have money now that in 2006, we could start the initial phase of this and then do the borrowing in 2007 that we could kind of do this up a little bit where it wouldn't be as much of a cost altogether? Do we have enough to initially give Mr. Savanesh that he would be able to start on the designs, et cetera, on the police station? Oh, yes, we do. Yes, we do. Alderman Grash. Rich, we do have that. Yes, as I mentioned, the money is in the capital projects fund and we do have a contract with Zimmerman Design. It's somewhere over a half million dollars for designing this project. It is encumbered. The purchase order has been led on that. The money is there and that was one of the first phases that the council had let. That's already happening. That's already happening. And there might even be some left over in that to begin like say, for instance, we had talked about a demolition or something like that. We might be able to start something like that but I can't say that for sure. It kind of depends on the design and the rest of Mr. Savanesh's work that he's been to do for us. Thank you, Alderman Grash. Alderman Manning. Thank you, Madam Chair. Three questions. Right now in our document, we basically plus money saved and ready to go, we have about eight million dollars we're talking about to build whatever size police station that might build. My question then is what square footage might that build? And secondarily, what design would you go with? Is this going to be two story, three story and third, given that limited amount of dollars from your perspective, can you build a site at a certain number of square feet that is more readily expandable in 10 to 15 years than might not be? Could you go through that first one? I was thinking about your third one. How many square feet can we get for eight million? General terms. We haven't worked through that and the reason I'm not trying to be evasive but there are really two cost model factors that we've worked with in the budget. One is cost per square foot and anticipated construction costs for vehicle storage and others for the balance of the building. And when we ran an initial cost model based on the 10 million dollar project that seemed to be coming out of finance, it was about a 65,000 square foot facility. That would need and still hasn't had input from the PD. If there was a dollar value less than that, you're more effective at reducing construction costs by cutting the building piece rather than the vehicle storage piece. But what you cut first is really a discussion between the police department that we haven't had. So if, and I'm gonna use wildly different numbers that are in the report just to demonstrate, if the building costs $200 a square foot and the vehicle storage costs $100 a square foot, clearly I'm more effective at reducing construction costs by cutting the building cost and cutting the square footage in the building than the vehicle storage. But we have not had those discussions. So I don't, if somebody said $8 million, it's gonna be less than 65,000 square feet, clearly. And I would hazard a guess not being the chief of police, he'd say, we'll get rid of the vehicle storage first and leave me as much program as I could get. But I don't know that. In terms of expansion and in terms of multi-story, when we did the first projection on site, we're looking at a fairly large building. It was the base building program. We're down to something less than 65,000 square feet. So anything that reduces the amount of building on the site is likely a good thing. It's a tight site. Give us more latitude and give us more options. I would tend to say I don't wanna do anything more than two stories because the function of the building works best at one story and two stories and two stories being the same model that we had taken a look at on the previous site, which is vehicle storage evidence and some training functions at the lower level and then the balance of the police department functions at the upper level. Now within that design, it might be that it's all of that stuff at grade and the equivalent of the second floor of this building might be the police department. It might be that's all underneath the police department. The police department's at the first floor of this building. We haven't gone through that yet. In terms of strategies for expansion, I would tend to say that if we're looking at police department expansion, it's better to leave a space on site for an expansion rather than building on top of it. And that's just based on the nature of expanding on top of functioning buildings. It's one thing to build on top of this building, which would be difficult in and of itself. But it's not a 24 seven kind of building. I can take disruptions. I can have things that happen on the weekend even that would have minimal impact on how this building function. I can't do that on a police department building. So when it gets to the point where it's time to tear the roof off and say, hey, we're gonna be building on top of you. What happens on the floor beneath that construction is often disruptive, almost unilaterally can't be weathertight adequately. And so it's very difficult to add on top of the building. So I would tend to want to restrict and reserve portions of the site for expansion in areas that seem to be appropriate rather than building on top. But given that we have a tight site on top might be the only scenario. There are ways to deal with how that roof would be framed that would make it less disruptive, but it's more initial cost. But tend to want to make it a floor right away rather than a roof, but you pay for that. You pay for that to be a floor rather than a roof. I guess one additional. My mind in picturing a, call it 58,000 square foot building somewhere in there, 55, 58, two story is there then enough space in that footprint that's still available on this ground level to add a 20,000 expansion to story adjacent later. Yeah, and concept, yes, I can attest to whether it's in the right place. It might be that when we get through with it, just depending on the plan, it's almost if you looked at a T-shaped building, you'd probably want to reserve space on the ends or maybe space in sort of in the haunches. But that's based on where we think strategically we might expand. And I put that in the context of if you said, well, maybe I want to add a range in the future. That's completely different than I want to expand patrol. And so we would look at where the expansion is likely to be then come up with a strategy for implementing it. One of which might be the garage space would be converted at some point. I mean, that's a viable strategy as well, but we haven't gotten to that point yet. Thank you. We'll go on with a few more questions, but I think it's just having that she's given us lots of information. I'll bet all of you have decided how you're going to vote. Alderman Ratkin. Thank you, Madam Chair. We have money still set aside. I believe it's one of a million dollars or something. So the figure I keep hearing about here. Now with that money set aside, maybe Tom Holton could possibly answer this question. We've got a 90-year-old garage back there that is going to be going as part of this project. There are a lot of unknowns out in that 90-year-old garage. There could be asbestos. There could be ground contamination. There could be a variety of different things due to the fact that at one time did fuel the vehicles here until they took the tanks and things away. Would it be advisable to study that particular issue this year and use some of that money this year to take care of that and get that part of the work done ahead of time and still let Mr. Sabinash do what he needs to do because that in and of itself could create a delay in the entire construction schedule. Could it not? Mr. Sabinash will be addressing those kinds of things as he gets started. It would be advisable to do any studies related to contaminants and environmental. You might do a phase one environmental or something of that ilk. It would be wise to do it now. Until we get into it, I don't know, but there might be mechanisms that try to avoid tearing that building down that we haven't considered yet. So we're at the time when all those ideas are valid ideas. That's the idea phase. And if we find out that there's something that's relatively insurmountable, there are still avenues available to us to try to avoid having to deal with that issue at this point. We get down the road and we're into construction documents and we've encumbered them with lion's share of our fee. That would be a bad time to find that out. So we're in the investigation stage. We're in the idea stage and those types of things are advisable now. I would have a, if you're envisioning putting money into this building, I would have this building analyzed the same way. Thank you, I'll be right back. Perhaps we can have the last two questions and then let's take a vote. Alderman Kittlesaw. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to say that those of us who did go to Jamesville, our understanding was they had a building committee that was formed with people, the key players that were going to be involved. You hashed this out for a number of months and then reported back to council with the findings and then they were kept informed. The communication was kept ongoing as the project progressed, am I correct? That's correct, they had a building needs committee that I think consisted of the chief of police, deputy chief, three Alderman, business owner, another woman that was a resident who was an interior designer and I think the assistant city manager and those people reported back on progress. I have to add that it was a progress project that went on hold for three years because they were dealing with some of the same issues you are in terms of state funding. The building use committee will be meeting and of course the police department will be in on that and Mr. Sabanash will be in on that and of course all you Alderman can come and watch and listen and participate also. Thank you Alderman Kittlesaw. Alderman Serda. Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me Mr. Sabanash too. I feel like my questions are coming a little bit too late because we've already established this site but I haven't had the opportunity to speak to you concerning some of the concerns I had. In the report it does mention that it's a possibility of using the first floor of this existing building with the addition as far as occupying it and if you could just expound on the $3 million cost associated with this building in order to build the structure and adjacent to this one. It just seems like I haven't been told what that $3 million will actually entail. Yeah I haven't, that was off some previous work that I believe the city had solicited so the numbers related to City Hall we haven't been charged with analyzing at this point. So I haven't seen them nor have we had a chance to take a look at what that buys for the city at this point. So I can't answer that question today. In terms of the first floor space versus other alternatives it's one of the design questions that we'll just have to answer. I know that the space in this building will have a premium, it will be at a premium and it may very well be that because of the staging of the project it benefits us to have the police department at a completely freestanding building. We looked at it and said it would be seemingly a good idea to try to keep the front door in the same place but there will be access challenges and other issues that will come to fruition and come to bear as we develop that design. So I know that it's doable but there may very well be more compelling reasons to have the police department in its own building. I know that from a staging standpoint it would be better if the building was a freestanding building and then in terms of City Hall it's always good to have a space that you can let the contractor work in and they basically would have the whole first floor and then if you looked at City Hall as a composite to have a place to be remodeled to move other departments into while their floor then gets remodeled to make some sense to try to leave the first floor vacant but how that works out we would have to consider with the chief and with the building committee and find out what's the best scenario. Thank you. I hate to say that any of those options is off the table but again from a remodeling standpoint and from an ability to stage a remodeling of City Hall it does make sense to have some space left available if PD just kept its presence on the first floor that option wouldn't exist. So there might be a compelling reason to say all move for PD. Thank you Alderman Serda. We have a motion on the floor to recommend to Council to accept and adopt the report of committee number 269-0506. And pass the resolution. And pass the resolution. Yes. Alderman Graf will you take the roll or Alderman Berg? Just a roll or? No, the vote, sorry. The vote. You want to roll a call of vote though. You roll a call of vote, yes. Okay, Bowman, D-Berg, E-Berg, Serda. Graf will be aye. Kittleson. Manny. Meyer. Montemure. Aye. Radke. Sagali. Stefan. Van Akron. 11 ayes, two noes. Motion carries. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Second? All in favor? Aye. Opposed?