Two weeks ago, the Oro Valley Town Council authorized staff to seek bids on a project to add a sally port to the municipal court remodeling project. The resolution authorizes the bid to be set at no more than $845,000. This amount is the sum of the anticipated savings of nearly $600,000 from the current Phase 1 and Phase 2 projects, plus an additional $245,000 from court system revenues. [Love's previous report]
Need for Sally Port is a direct result of “Soft on Crime” county prosecution
According to Vice Mayor Melanie Barrett: “What we have been experiencing is that we're having difficulty getting Pima County to prosecute criminals who are being apprehended in Oro Valley. So we have criminals of various types being apprehended in Oro Valley, but their cases are getting dismissed at the county level. We are then bringing those people into the town court. That's part of the reason we’re having to increase funding for prosecution, make these facilities available, and enhance the security of the areas where we hold prisoners.”
Town Magistrate Hazel informed the council that he always envisioned a sally port as part of the expansion project. He even discussed it with some council members. However, it was not included in the project because former Town Manager Mary Jacobs decided against it. That “mistake” continued, and current Town Manager Jeff Wilkins did not include it in the most recent budget approved in June.
Quote from current court remodeling project contractor far too much
Paul Keesler, Director of Public Works, explained why staff is seeking permission to bid the work. According to Keesler: “We’re talking prison-grade finishes here… we went through a large value-engineering effort. This is really cut down in half. We went back to the contractor and said: ‘Okay, you were at a million dollars on your first bid; we cut it in half.’ We expected [the contractor’s bid] to be down around five or six hundred thousand. He came back with a bid of eight hundred fifty thousand.”
That is far too much, according to Barrett: “There is a need for this, but the cost—at a million dollars to build something that could construct a really nice house in Oro Valley…[something that] has two toilets and brick walls—is not what our taxpayers would expect,” observed Barrett.
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