The Cloud County Law Enforcement Center - and its jail, specifically - has been plagued with problems even before construction was completed in 2014.
From its conception, elected officials and community leaders had envisioned a facility that would, in essence, pay for itself by housing inmates from other jurisdictions. But ongoing issues and repairs have cost taxpayers millions of dollars in additional expenditures.
In 2011, Cloud County commissioners had a major problem on their hands. The old Cloud County Jail, located on the corner of 9th and Broadway, was being forced to close.
Built in the 1930s, the jail was in such bad shape that the state of Kansas told Cloud County that it had three options: build a new jail, remodel the current facility, or ship its prisoners elsewhere for housing.
The Blade-Empire spoke with Gail Engle, who was one of three county commissioners in 2011. "Basically, it was the state Fire Marshal who told us he was going to shut down the jail," Engle said.
Randy Sorell started as a correction officer at the old jail in 1993. He was promoted to jail administrator in 1999 and served until 2007. "It (the old jail) was in bad shape," Sorell said. "We had problems with the foundation. The boiler and generator were constantly needing repairs. Plumbing was a major problem. Those pipes were so old."
The jail had originally been built to house 16 inmates - eight on the south side and eight on the north. Several remodels, including converting the old garage into a cell block, raised the occupancy to 32 inmates. "We weren't always at capacity, but even with 15-20 inmates in there, the plumbing just couldn't keep up," Sorell said. "There were so many issues. We would fix what we could, and maybe that would last for six months or a year. But then there would be problems with something else. I told Larry (Larry Bergstrom, Cloud County Sheriff at the time), that we can't keep putting band-aids on things that need major surgery."
By December of 2011, county officials had decided to build a new jail. And it would be big. The old jail had a capacity to house up to 32 inmates. The new jail was originally planned as a 76-bed facility, and then an 80-bed facility. The belief then among elected officials and community leaders had a common theme: a jail that size would generate enough income from housing inmates from other jurisdictions that it would cover the cost of the bond payment each year.
A Cloud County Resolution was passed to issue bonds for the construction of a new Cloud County Law Enforcement Center that would include a jail.
But citizen protests quickly spread across the county. The protesters wanted the jail question placed on a ballot for county residents to vote on.
County commissioners Gail Engle, Gary Caspers, and Johnita Crawford and other elected officials, including Sheriff Brian Marks, held a series of five community meetings in Concordia, Miltonvale, Clyde, Glasco, and Jamestown to speak on the new jail proposition. According to former commissioner Caspers, some of the meetings were tense, with heated exchanges between concerned citizens and officials.
By February 1, 2012, a petition to force an election ballot measure on the financing of a new law enforcement center and jail was certified. A total of 310 qualified signatures was required. Protestors had obtained 448.
The Cloud County board of commissioners set the date of April 3 for a special countywide election to "...acquire a site and construct and equip thereon a new Law Enforcement/Detention Center to be leased to Cloud County, Kansas; to issue Revenue Bonds for the purpose of paying all of a portion of the costs thereof and related reserves and financing cost and providing for the giving of a notice of said intention."
On April 3, county voters approved the ballot measure by a vote of 1,218 to 567. Construction of a new facility would be financed up to $6 million.
The architectural firm of Goldberg, Sullivan, McCreery Architects & Planners Inc., of St. Joseph, Missouri, had been chosen to design the new facility.
"They were highly recommended; they had designed a lot of law enforcement centers," recalled former county commissioner Engle. "We felt very good going with them at the time. They would oversee the entire project."
Former county commissioner Caspers echoed that sentiment. "They had built jails all over. They flew me and Brian (Sheriff Brian Marks) to Atlanta; took us to several jails they had built. We didn't know anything about building a jail, but they did. We definitely trusted them."
The Blade-Empire made two separate calls to the firm of Goldberg Group Architects(GAA) on January 14 and January 16. During both phone calls an employee confirmed that this was the same firm once known as Goldberg, Sullivan, McCreery Architects & Planners Inc. The Blade-Empire left messages both times requesting to speak to someone about the Cloud County Law Enforcement Center.
The Blade-Empire placed a third phone call to GGA on January 20. At the time of the publication of this article, no one from the firm of GGA had returned our calls.
By law, the building of a new law enforcement center had to be put up for bid.
"The architects were definitely concerned that it would be placed on a ballot," said Caspers. "They started saying 'we don't need this', or 'we can cut that.' Just trying to get the cost lower."
In early August 2012, 12 sealed bids were opened at the Cloud County Courthouse with county commissioners present. Zahner Hansen Construction Group, Inc. of Brentwood, Tennessee, was the low bidder at $4.680,050.
They had never built a jail before.
"That made me nervous," said Caspers. "Most of the bids were over six million; some were around seven or eight million. The only company that that said they can build it for this price had never built a jail before. But the architects said we can trust this group (Zahner Hansen). They'd make sure it would get done right."
In early September 2012, county commissioners approved issuing a Conditional Notice of Award and Letter of Intent to Zahner Hansen Construction Group, Inc. to build the new law enforcement center and jail.
On September 17, a groundbreaking ceremony for the facility was held at its site north of Concordia. A contracted substantial completion date was set for September, 2013.
"Knowing what we know now, we should have hired our own inspector," said Caspers. "It would have cost us another $100,000 or $200,000, which we now know would have been worth it. You can definitely look back now and say, you know, we should have gone back to the drawing board on this. But what options did we have? We were limited in the amount of money we could spend, and we trusted people we believed were the experts on building this thing."
The Blade-Empire placed multiple calls to a phone number listed for Zahner Hansen Construction Group in Tennessee. None of the calls were answered.
Almost as soon as construction began on the new law enforcement center and jail, problems began, and so did the delays.
By early August 2013, at a public meeting attended by county commissioners and representatives from Zahner Hanson, Todd Stupka, the owner of TKA construction, presented a list of 103 problems he had detected with the construction of the law enforcement center.
Stupka had been employed for approximately seven weeks on the construction project. "I am doing this because it needs to be fixed," Stupka said at the time. "It needs to fixed right."
Stupka stated at the meeting that, "I think it's a total lack of experience. In my eyes, it is a total lack of workmanship."
Of the 103 items on his list, Stupka stated that 30 to 40 percent of them were not fixable unless the roof was torn off. "I tried to find a side where there was nothing wrong, and couldn't do it," Stupka said.
Some of the items that Stupka said were major issues included: sheets are out of level on the south side of the building, and missing structure around corners and columns; a wrong screw pattern on the the south sheet of the building's west side; the structure was out of level with large windows on the building's west side; the structure at the peak is out of level two inches to six feet on the building's south side; and the building's roof had missing or incorrect sheet splices, and the modularity was off by ten inches or more.
By late August 2013, it had become apparent that the law enforcement center was not going to meet its grand opening date of September. The completion date was reset to October 15.
In an October 16, 2013, article in the Blade-Empire, Tom Wierenga, superintendent with Zahner Hansen Construction, had told Cloud County commissioners that the completion date was now pushed back to November 1. Wierenga said that the electrical contractor who was working on the project was not able to pay his employees, and they had left the work site.
In an October 22 article in the Blade-Empire, the electrical contractor, Hot Wire, disputed that claim, saying they had not been paid by Zahner Hansen Construction and could not ask their employees to return to the worksite unpaid.
By early November, the completion date had been rescheduled to December 20.
By mid-December, Zahner Hansen had brought in a new construction superintendent, Jody Cotton, and set a new completion date of January 31, 2014.
In January and February 2014, the completion date for the law enforcement center was again postponed.
On March 28, 2014, over six months after its original scheduled completion date, the Cloud County Law Enforcement Center and its jail held an official grand opening.
The problems with the jail were just beginning.
NEXT WEEK - Part 2: The Cloud County Jail 2014-2021
