T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Marshall County Sheriff Joel Phillips, left, and Buildings and Grounds Director Lucas Baedke, right, address the board of supervisors about a payment request from OPN Architects during the regular meeting at the courthouse on Wednesday morning.

During their regular meeting on Wednesday morning, the Marshall County Board of Supervisors considered a payment request just shy of $15,000 for “additional services” from OPN Architects — the company they worked with to formulate cost estimates on proposed renovations to the jail/sheriff’s office complex — and declined to take action at the present time, citing the fact that the first round of bids came in so high and did not result in an awarding of contract last December.

County Buildings and Grounds Director Lucas Baedke presented the request related to additional architectural and engineering services, which totaled $14,832, to the board on Wednesday and explained that they could either ask OPN to submit the contract change as presented or engage in further conversations.

Supervisor Jarret Heil noted that the county had already paid the firm about $200,000 for their services related to the project over the last two years.

“They’re wanting to hit us (for) another $15,000 now. The whole point of them was to get us up for bid, and we never got a bid. So I’m not sure that this $15,000 is necessary when we’ve already given them a pretty good amount of dollars,” Heil said.

Board Chairwoman Carol Hibbs asked about the next steps on the project after all six of the bids the county received in December were at least $1.5 million over the original estimate of around $2.25 million, which would be paid with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars.

“I’ve reached out to them asking for an update on the updated plans that we have that are hopefully going out for bid here soon. Those plans are currently at the code official again being reviewed,” Baedke said. “The idea is that we have made basically no changes to the inside of the building on this other than very, very small changes, so there shouldn’t be any request from them for additional scope on this plan. So once we get that, we can move forward with the public posting process and the resolutions that we need to handle internally on that.”

He added that the plans were sent to the code official three weeks ago, and he didn’t think it would take more than two weeks to get them approved. Hibbs felt that if this bid process was successful, the board would be more likely to entertain the request, but she was “not really inclined” to pay it out at the present time.

Baedke called her position “fair.”

“I will definitely take that back to them and say ‘Hey, at this time, we’re not super jazzed about the services that OPN has provided overall on this project, and if things go smoothly, we’ll have that discussion.’ Does that work?” he asked.

Heil felt that was a reasonable position to take, but he did add that he didn’t want to give off the impression that OPN hadn’t done any work.

“They got us some really good drawings. They got things started for us to determine what we need to do out at the Sheriff’s Office, which was helpful, but it obviously didn’t help us get to bid. And maybe the scope of the project’s a little bit different than some opinions of us in the room of what they put together, but they did do work,” he said. “But the fact that we didn’t get a bid, I think, is the biggest concern for us, and for us to keep shelling out cash — ARPA dollars, tax dollars that it be, we want to make sure that we’re spending dollars appropriately, not for just going out to bid and getting nothing again.”

Sheriff Joel Phillips expressed a similar sentiment in his remarks to the board.

“They missed the bidding process by $1.8 million, and just an apology, I think that’s kind of hard to accept,” he said.

During the most recent meeting with OPN in April, Phillips said they weren’t necessarily revamping the entire project but rather removing items to decrease the overall cost, and he agreed with the position of the board out of respect for the sheriff’s office and the taxpayers of Marshall County. He was also concerned about the removal of some of the windows from the latest alternate and only getting “part of a project” done.

No action was taken, and Baedke pledged to take the message back to OPN as conversations continue.

In other business, the board:

• Again heard concerns from Mark Wyant, who this time was accompanied by neighbor Roger Mathews, about ruts in the 260th Street/Ridge Road area and what he felt was a lack of communication from the Secondary Roads department’s blade operator, during the public comment period, with County Engineer Paul Geilenfeldt responding that the lack of ditches was creating the drainage problem. He added that grading and paving the road was the best long-term solution, but it would be expensive and take time.

“Everything else is just Band Aids,” Geilenfeldt said.

• Approved extensions to the law enforcement 28E agreements with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office through June 20, 2026 for the cities of Gilman, Albion, St. Anthony, Haverhill, Laurel, Le Grand, Clemons, Rhodes, Ferguson, Liscomb and Melbourne.

• Approved the purchase of a Kubota SVL97 Track Loader from Central Iowa Farm Store of Marshalltown at a cost of $42,782.09.

• Approved the consent agenda, which includes the annual publication of salaries in accordance with the Iowa Code, as listed.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255

or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.