County spends $1.2 million for renovations, jail construction

Steve Turner, trustee of Pontotoc County Public Facilities Authority, discussed handling of trust funds used for courthouse renovation and construction of the new jail Monday.

The $14.6 million project is being funded by an 11/16’s cent countywide sales tax increase approved by voters in July 2006. But the county needed cash up front, so instead of going through underwriters who usually get four to six percent of the total proceeds, several local banks (Vision, Citizens, Landmark and First United) agreed to finance the projects.

“By doing that, they saved all of those bond fees plus, because of the Community Reinvestment Act, they were able to get an extremely low interest rate and that in itself is helping us save hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of this project,” Turner said.

“It’s just an amazing illustration of cooperation of so many people. From county officials to the trust, the commissioners, local banks, courthouse workers, the construction company, the architect and certainly the citizens of Pontotoc County that voted to support funding the sales tax, so it’s an amazing success story.”

About $1.8 million was allocated to purchase land for the new jail and for renting space for county offices during the renovation of the courthouse. Turner said the decision to purchase land for several county offices instead of renting made more sense in the long run.

Although $1.2 million was allocated to buy land for the new jail, the trust purchased the land at a cost of $550,000.

Several years ago, the county purchased the old “Arkla Gas” building and the district attorney’s office was relocated there. It made sense to the trust to leave the district attorney’s office there and acquire the adjacent property for other county offices if it could be purchased for the right price.

The trust purchased the old Oklahoma Gas and Electric building next door to the D.A.’s office for $196,198 and it will be the new permanent home of the sheriff’s department.

Two red-brick houses across from the courthouse on the southeast corner of 13th and Townsend were purchased for a total of $399,834. The corner house will be the new permanent home of the County Election Board. The other house just to the south, which is actually on Townsend, will be the permanent home of drug court.

The trust purchased what’s known as the old “Eye Q” building for $549,598. The building — located at the southwest corner of 13th and Broadway — was once a bank and contains a large vault. Turner said the vault could be put to good use by all county offices for storing items such as evidence or restricted records. The building will likely be used by the county assessor, treasurer and county clerk, although a final decision has yet to be made.

“It’s a much better situation to have ownership of those properties and have something for the future,” Turner said. “Our goal for the trust is how best to serve the citizens of Pontotoc County. Secondly, how to provide a safe, healthy, clean working environment for all county officials and all the workers in these facilities. So, that’s what we’re really hoping to do.”

Turner said it would have cost the trust nearly the same to rent buildings and renovate them to specifications as to buy permanent building space.

“There’s a lot of economic development, space is limited, it’s hard to find space to locate every function of county government,” Turner said. “Secondly, the cost that we were told, and I will not identify any of the potential places that people tried to get us to rent, I’m not going to go there, but the cost to renovate them and get them ready were really high.”

In other words, trustees believed the wiser choice would be to buy a few permanent homes for some county offices rather than rent and renovate buildings to accommodate them temporarily.

Turner said the idea was to free up space in the already overcrowded courthouse so some county offices would only have to move once.

“The trust is responsible to pay all of those expenses related to renovating the courthouse, moving the courthouse employees, getting the jail construction, only those temporary type things, that’s the responsibility of the trust,” Turner said.

“As I said early on, there was a good faith budget of projected cost,” Turner said. “In that I believe for land acquisition, for real estate purchases it was about $1.2 million. There was another $500,000 to $600,000 set up for rented facilities for 18 to 24 months.”

Officials are speculating the move for the courts to the Agri-plex could be in December and all other county offices will move out in March 2009. County officials will notify residents when the time comes.