Scoring for library architect selection seems more rigorous now,
at yesterday morning’s

Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
But where are the scores?
And what are the names of the two finalists?
They vote or table tonight at 5:30 PM.

8.h. New Main Library — Construction Manager At Risk Selection

Project Manager Chad McCleod said
proposals had been received from nine firms,
and “using a score sheet with certain grading criteria”
staff narrowed them down to three offers.
Each firm gave a one-hour presentation last Friday to
the selection committee which again
“used certain grading criteria to score each firm”.
The top two scorers were Coffee[?] Construction and
Quillian Powell Construction.

I applaud actually using scoring, instead of what appeared to happen
for the main library architect selection, with

a relatively elaborate selection process including a scoring sheet
that then apparently wasn’t actually used in the architect selection.
But where are these filled-out score sheets for the applicants this time,
so we the taxpayers can see them?

The Commission could have staff

submit written reports that
go in the agenda and minutes, like the Library Board does,
and then put those online as PDF or HTML linked to an HTML agenda,
like Glynn County
and Richmond County do, and we wouldn’t have to guess the
names of construction firms.

County Manager Joe Pritchard said
“the reason we have moved forward”
even though

SPLOST failed was
“only to put the team together if and when funds become available
in the future”.

The Chairman and Commissioner Raines mentioned that there
are other sources of funds for a library, and Raines even said:

This is not even related to SPLOST.

Hm, why was it in

the county’s SPLOST project list, then?

It appears the county hasn’t even considered whether
the Five Points location was maybe part of why SPLOST failed,
and maybe they should consider for example the federal building
downtown.
I’m a big supporter of libraries, but I’m also a big supporter of
elected governments listening to the people, and the people just
voted down SPLOST, with many of them saying the library and auditorium
projects with their opaque selection processes were part of the reason.
Meanwhile Houston County had public hearings about their SPLOST, which voters then

approved in a landslide.

Here’s

the video:

County proceeding on a fixed library line

Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 10 December 2012.

-jsq