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KSJD Newscast - April 18th, 2016

  • The Montezuma County Commissioners will move forward with FCI Constructors rather than their original choice of Jaynes Corporation as the construction company for a new courthouse in Cortez.

The Montezuma County commissioners said Monday they will move forward with FCI Constructors rather than their original choice of Jaynes as the construction company for a new courthouse on Park Street in Cortez. The commissioners had voted on March 21st to accept Jaynes’s bid, contingent on pricing negotiations. But on Monday the owner’s rep for the project, Monty Guiles, told the board that Jaynes had not provided a guaranteed maximum price as expected by April 12th but had told him their total bid would be $10.7 million, $3 million higher than the county has budgeted. Guiles said he was investigating what the 22nd Judicial District “could live with” if the scope of the project must be downsized. State court administrators have pushed the county to build a combined facility that will house both county and district courts. Guiles said the number of courtrooms could be reduced from four to three to cut square footage from the original 32,400, and the tunnel and elevators for prisoner transport could be eliminated. Commissioner Keenan Ertel voiced disappointment in Jaynes, saying he felt they had not been totally honest with the county. FCI was the second-highest bidder of three for the courthouse project.
 

Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
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