La Plata County officials are examining the most cost-effective ways to expand the county Road and Bridge Department offices on U.S. Highway 160, a project estimated to cost $750,000 in capital funds.
On Wednesday, officials met with an architect designing an addition that will allow the Public Works engineering division to move out of the county-owned Old Main Post Office.
Tim Flanagan of Flanagan Architecture said extending the building’s south side would be economical because the two departments could share entryways, a conference room and kitchen.
To save more money, commissioners suggested the extension could have a metal exterior, as opposed to stucco or masonry.
“I wasn’t for this in the 2017 budget, but functionality is the highest priority,” Commissioner Julie Westendorff said. “It’s the Road and Bridge Department, so it’s OK if the building looks a little industrial. I think the county’s (financial) circumstances right now call for economics versus aesthetics.”
After property tax increases were voted down in November for the second time, and the county faces a 13.6 percent decline in revenue, a new urgency is pressing the county to sell the Old Main Post Office, a $4.9 million asset that houses the information technology and treasurer’s offices as well as the engineering department.
County staff members said a tenant at 10 Burnett Court, a building the county purchased this year, intends to vacate in 2017, freeing space for another department from the Old Main Post Office.
To offset the road and bridge building addition, the county plans to apply for a 50 percent match from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs through a state program that mitigates costs of local capital projects. But because of a decline in available energy and mineral impact assistance funds, the county might not be able to seek the grant for the building addition until August 2017.
An application for a $1 million DOLA grant to improve County Road 120 – a project cost-shared with the King II coal mine in Hesperus – takes first priority, County Manager Joe Kerby said.
“We don’t request multiple grants in the same cycle, because we don’t want the projects to compete,” Kerby said. “This has an impact on our capital projects, because it’s all about timing.”
The state’s energy impact assistance fund is directly tied to severance taxes, which have taken a hit because of the lull in oil and gas extraction. The state is seeing a 43 percent reduction in the 2016-17 fiscal year, DOLA spokeswoman Denise Stepto said.
“Two years ago, we issued as much as $30 million (in energy impact grants) statewide in a grant cycle,” Stepto said. “We just announced an award for $9.3 million in severance tax dollars.”
Because of declining funds, the state reduced the amount that can be requested from $1 million to $750,000 and is combining two grant cycles to give local governments more time to prioritize their projects.
jpace@durangoherald.com
