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Finance Committee learns Logan
County Jail project is coming in at more than $7,000,000
[May 15, 2025]
At the Tuesday, May 13th
meeting of the Logan County Board Finance Committee, members heard
from Greg Doolin with O’Shea Builders about the upcoming Logan
County Jail project. The Logan County Jail is located at 911 Pekin
Street and is a part of the Logan County Safety Complex. It is under
the jurisdiction of the Logan County Board and is managed by the
Logan County Sheriff’s office.
Doolin began with a detailed explanation of the bidding process with
grant funds are involved. He spoke about the strings that are
attached to each of the two grants that will provide partial funding
for the project. Doolin explained that the grant received from the
state has two stipulations. The first, according to the Illinois
Works Jobs Program Act Apprenticeship Initiative, says that a
certain percentage of the workforce must be apprentices or people in
training. To simplify the facts, Doolin said that they were able to
reduce the percentage from 10 percent to 3 percent based on section
17 of the Project Bidders Manual.
The second stipulation is the DCEO
Business Enterprise program requirement. This requirement says that
7 percent of all dollars awarded in contracts must go to woman or
minority owned businesses. Doolin said that thankfully one of the
largest projects was bid by a female owned business to the tune of
$833,300. With three other contractors being DCEO certified woman or
minority owned businesses and a fourth that has applied for the DCEO
certification which is now pending, the total percentage of woman or
minority owned businesses participating in the project will end up
being 16.97 percent of all bidders awarded and 13.2 percent of the
total dollar figure.
Doolin said that O’Shea contacts each bidder for a one hour phone
interview that establishes this information and other details. As of
Tuesday night, he said that there were going to be 15 bids and that
he has interviewed all but one.
Other information Doolin shared was on the payment process for the
contractors. He said O’Shae would be the agent for the county, and
would collect all the bills from the contractors, would verify the
work, then submit a request for payment to the county. That request
would be to pay out the specified amount to O’Shea, who in turn
would distribute the payments to the appropriate parties.
He said this simplified matters for the county treasurer and the
board, in that all the work to justify the payments would be done by
O’Shea and all the county would have to do is accept O’Shea’s
request and write the check.
Doolin also noted that O’Shea does not open the bids when they come
in. The bids are opened publicly by Logan County Sheriff’s
representatives. Those representatives are Logan County Deputy
Sheriff Mike Block and Logan County Jail Administrator Rod Boyd.
After explaining the process thoroughly to the committee Doolin went
in to the money aspect of the project.
He said that all in along with a $172,000 contingency fund, the
project was going to come to $7,384,325, approximately $1 million
more than the county had planned for. He said that it was the cost
of doing business at this point in time, and that several of the
bidders had commented that prices were going up every day.
Fortunately for the county, by law, the bidders have to guarantee
their prices for 90 days.
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The county had come up with
about $6.3 million, or so they thought. There was an American
Recovery Plan Grant for $4.7 million and a state grant for $1.5
million. Giving them $6.2 million.
However, County Treasurer Penny Thomas said that at this moment,
the county does not have $6.2 million designated to the jail
project. She said that they only have $5.6 million. She said
that what happened was that the county voted to take $2 million
out of the ARPA grant that was designated to the Broadband
program and give it to the jail project. However, later on, the
county voted to give that $2 million back to broadband, and did
not give Thomas any direction on where the extra money for the
jail would come from.
The committee members on hand Tuesday evening included Chair
Kathy Schmidt, Vice-Chair Joseph Kuhlman and Lance Conahan.
Keenan Leesman was absent for the evening. Also on had was
Thomas, Boyd, Block, and county board member Gil Turner.
When Thomas said that the board had given the money back to
broadband, Schmidt said she did not remember that vote, but
Turner said he did and he told Shmidt that she and he were two
that had voted against giving the money back to broadband.
Conahan said he also didn’t recall and dug through his file
folder of notes from the previous meeting to see if he could
find any other details.
Conahan did come up with notes from the vote that he shared with
Thomas but did not share with the committee.
Schmidt said that it was a matter of the jail project had to be
done no matter what. She said that there was the option of going
back to looking at issuing a bond for the balance. She said that
it may come to having a special meeting with a bond agent and
getting the ball rolling in that direction.
The topic is going to be discussed further, but the county is also
aware that they need to move quickly as the clock is counting down
the 90 days until all the bids placed may be rescinded. Doolin had
also told the board that while the law states 90 days, it is good to
get it all done as quickly as possible. He is planning on having
bids ready to present at the workshop meeting on Thursday, May 15th.
He also noted that recently O’Shea was able to hold prices from
bidders on an extremely large project in Springfield for well over
the 90 days, but that is the exception not the rule.
Nila Smith
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