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What is this?
photo by Eric Johnson
An excavator from Hansen Excavating works land where the old Steve's Pizza building once stood while in the background sits the Robbins Block and the Law Enforcement Center. Fifty-one percent of contracts for the building of the new jail and justice center were awarded to local contractors.
Jail project stimulates economy
Published Saturday, March 28, 2009
The Mower County Jail and Justice Center project will stimulate the economy like no other economic stimulus package could.
Fully 51 percent of the contracts awarded went to local contractors.
That’s $8.5 million of the proposed $30.7 million project.
The south of two blocks in downtown Austin is the most-watched property in the city.
Earth-moving equipment, bulldozers and dump trucks criss-cross the block where a new two-story, 128-bed jail and justice center will be constructed.
The constant “beep, beep, beeps” of the equipment are a warning for those who venture behind and a signal of the largest capital improvement project in Mower County’s history to come.
Sometime this week, the Robbins block will be cleared to make way for a geothermal well field to heat and cool the new facilities across Second Avenue Northeast.
There’s a lot of gloom and doom in the economy, but the project has created a silver lining in an otherwise cloudy economic climate in Austin.
“We’re pleased so many of our local contractors got the work,” said Sandy Forstner, executive director of the Austin Area Chamber of Commerce. “This speaks well of their competitiveness.”
According to Forstner, “Those dollars spent locally will keep the contractors’ employees busy and provide them with good paychecks.”
As the project enfolds this spring and summer, the public will learn more about the firms, and there’s a strong hint there’s plenty to learn.
For instance, 75 to 80 percent of the business done by Austin-based Harty Mechanical, Inc. is done in the area of geothermal projects.
Harty Mechanical, which is located in the former Austin Coca-Cola Company Inc. bottling plant at the intersection of East Oakland Place and First Avenue Northeast, submitted the low bids on the project’s plumbing, piping and geothermal, $3.26 million.
Patrick Harty, son of company president Patrick Harty, said there is new excitement at the firm.
“Morale is higher among our employees,” he said.
Jon Pristach of Knutson Construction Services, Inc., Rochester, the construction manager for the project, will meet with Harty Mechanical and other contractors for a pre-construction conference later this week.
That’s when a time table for the massive project will be laid out for all.
The project will mean the firm will be hiring personnel.
According to Harty, employees of the firm will be pleased to have work “close to home” after the myriad of geothermal projects that have taken workers far away from Austin.
The project manager said he shares in employees’ excitement about what lies ahead this summer.
“I live here, too,” he said. “This is exciting for me personally to be a party of a project like this in my hometown.”
Schammel Electric Inc. was awarded a contract for $2.85 million for electrical work in the new jail and justice center.
“We think it’s great,” Kevin Schammel said. “We aggressively bid the project and the work we were hired to do is a lot of the work we do all the time.”
That’s exactly the kind of work the Austin-based firm did at new justice center facilities in Freeborn, Steele, Dakota, Scott and other counties.
Jerry Schammel started the family-owned business in 1957. Kevin and his brother, Kollin, are second-generation members of the family to be involved.
“There will be some hiring of personnel as we move forward,” Kevin predicted. “We haven’t had this big a project locally since the new Wal-Mart Super Center project.
“This only helps the local economy with the jobs it means to a lot of people,” he said.
Austin-based The Joseph Company will be contracted for general trades work, $653,000, and concrete work, $700,000.
Last fall, the estimated bids to be submitted for the work totaled $35.4 million.
Although bids for jail detention furnishings, including sliding cell doors, remain to be tabulated, county officials and staff have estimated the final bid totals at $30.7 million.
Austin-based contractors are slated to receive $8.47 million, or 51 percent of that amount.
Southeast Minnesota firms (including Austin) are slated to receive $12.02 million, or 72 percent of the total.
Soil corrections will continue this week, where the new jail and justice center will rise in the south block to the north edge of a soon-to-be-vacated one-block stretch of Third Avenue Northeast.
Buildings in the north block between Third and Fourth Avenues Northeast will have to be demolished before the second block — slated for expansion of the facilities — can be cleared.
A two-block portion of First Street Northeast from Fourth Avenue south to Second Avenue will be turned into a one-way southbound street to accommodate jail and justice center employees.
The Robbins block will soon be cleared of all buildings to make way for the geothermal well field.
Only the southeast corner of the block, where an Austin Housing and Redevelopment Authority parking lot is located, will be left untouched.
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Comments
Posted by notsuprised (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 10:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Lee - where is the money for this "stimulus" coming from? We've robbed Peter to pay Paul.
Posted by metisman (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 12:10 p.m. (Suggest removal)
51% of the contracts went to locals, but only 28% of the money went to locals.
As notsurprised notes, where does this money come from? A 20% increase in local property tax?
We will have a new half empty jail financed by retired people who are barely getting by. Where is the outrage at this boondoggle?
Posted by IJ (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 12:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)
metisman - are you outraged at all of these high taxes? or just the ones that you have to pay?
notsurprised - all "stimulus" bills rob peter to pay paul... but you weren't complaining when you got that $800 check in the mail last year were you?
Posted by Aletheia_Kratos (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 12:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Perhaps if this is an economic stimulus, we should expand the plan. If all we need do to stimulate the economy is take money from one person and give it to another person then why not go all the way.
Perhaps Mr. Bonorden would like to give his entire net worth to someone else. After all that would stimulate the economy.
Perhaps we should take all the wealth from all the citizens in Mower County and give a tiny fraction of it to a hand full of contractors and the rest to bond investors far away from Mower County. That way our economy would be assured to be stimulated.
Economic stimulus requires the creation of wealth, not the redistribution of wealth. Shuffling the dollars in the deck and then building a house of cards does not expand the economy. In fact, it drains the economy of what it needs - new money in local circulation.
Contrary to the claim blindly repeated by our beat reporter, over taxation tends to retard the economy not stimulate the economy. With more and more of your money going to wasteful spending, the few jobs created in the short term give the false impression of an improved job market. But those jobs will not be sustained because they are not a natural part of the private economy.
A few construction jobs will exist in the near term, but the long term damage will be done. For twenty years the damage will continue as the taxes needed to pay for the folly mount. Wind taxes that could have made Mower County a low tax, high profit center for business expansion will be diverted to worthless and unproductive uses. Profits and wages that should go to buying goods and services in the general economy will be gobbled up to pay interest on debt owed to national and international bond investors. Money that should remain here to stimulate our economy will flood out of our community to places unknown.
Jobs that might otherwise have come will flee. Jobs that might otherwise be added by existing business will be delayed or avoided.
Yep, Mr. Bonorden you are right. This laughable project "will stimulate the economy like no other economic stimulus package could." With any more stimulus like this will there be an economy remaining when they are finished? Only time will tell.
Posted by Aletheia_Kratos (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 12:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)
IJ - the difference between this and a "rebate" check is that this takes money from the private economy and diverts it to the black hole of government. The "rebate" checks - whether they were a good idea or not - actually returned money that had been diverted from the private economy back to the private economy. So not all stimulus plans are created equal. Some are sort of silly and some are outright stupid. Some, like the local fiasco cannot even rightly be called a stimulus.
Think of it this way, if this were a private construction project it would stimulate the economy. Money from outside the community would be brought in to pay for the construction of the project. The project on the end would be intended to produce a good or service that would produce a profit - likely from the sale of those goods and services both within and outside the community. Those profits would be used to pay for the ongoing operations of the new facility, including paying for the employees who work there. And in the end, the new facility would be taxed and help relieve the tax burden on the rest of us who are already here.
This project does exactly the opposite. It takes money from the community and sends it outside of the community to pay for the construction and the debt incurred to build. The end result is a facility that produces no known good or service that is not fully capable of being produced without the facility - so no expansion. Since it is not intended to be a profit center, it entire operational expense will continue to serve as a sink hole on the local economy where productive dollars are diverted into unproductive government waste. Further, with the retardation of the economy that is guaranteed to result in the higher tax burden here than elsewhere, there will actually be less taxable properties to spread the tax burden over. The result, more taxes paid by those still here.
It is sad that our leaders are not expected to understand these concepts before being elected.
Posted by notsuprised (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 12:57 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Stimulus check...yeah right, still looking for that IJ. And no, even if I qualifed, I wouldn't be for it. I'm against all of this redistrubition of wealth. Voted Ron Paul.
Posted by IJ (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 1:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Krutos- your ignorance is astonishing. You lack even the most basic economic sense. It's pointless to reply to your 5 paragraph entries because they are a collection of pointless, incredibly inaccurate statements.
Posted by jimbennett (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 2:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)
IJ... Please debunk just one point that AK made.
Posted by Aletheia_Kratos (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 4:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
IJ - instead of blanket attacks with no substance, try one attack with substance. The world waits for your wisdom.
I wait for your discussion of one of my points to show the ignorance.
Let me list the points you can choose from:
1. Giving back tax dollars to the private sector is different than taking money from the private sector for non-private purposes.
2. Private capital investment provides for long term economic growth.
3. Government spending - especially on projects that are objectively wasteful and unnecessary - does not create long term economic growth.
4. Burdensome taxation provides a disincentive for economic growth or when given a choice of creating jobs in a low tax location or a high tax location, the private sector tends to choose the low tax location.
5. Without the long term costs of the jail, the wind tax could have been spent on existing general fund spending and would have created an environment for reduced taxation and therefore an environment that would be attractive to job creation.
6. Our leadership has not the first care nor the first scintilla of grasp on common and basic economic concepts.
Please, pick one and give us your response.
Posted by Rhino (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 6:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Nice Kratos, real nice. Call him out...LOL. sorry don't mean to laugh. But the shear ignorance of people talking before thinking. My dad once said 'engage your mind before you engage your mouth". good luck my friend but no matter what you say or how you explain it... he wont beliave it, understand it nor really read what you write. I on the other hand trust what you are writing.
Posted by Sirius_Dogood (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 7:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I agree with JB and AK, these are things that are covered in even High School Economics, Riverland has a course called Macro Economics that you might want to look into also. LJ if you want you might be able to find a college student to help you with your debunking.
Please LJ explain our error to us.
Posted by Aletheia_Kratos (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 7:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)
IJ's comment condemning me is the equivalent of the oft used elementary school retort of "Nuh-uh!" Sorry but on issues as important as this, I appreciate the most here expect more.
IJ has waded into the deep end of the pool and his lifeguard is not looking. Could someone throw him/her a rope.
Posted by Rhino (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 7:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Oh darn, I left my rope at home.
Posted by Aletheia_Kratos (anonymous) on March 29, 2009 at 8:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)
That is OK. IJ would probably just hang himself/herself with it anyway.
Posted by lanny (anonymous) on March 30, 2009 at 9:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
It's beautiful isn't it? Let's close Packer Arena and open a jail...do you think the county commissioners would consider putting a sheet of ice in the new jail?
Posted by metisman (anonymous) on March 30, 2009 at 10:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
put the jail in packer arena
Posted by purpleheart1 (anonymous) on March 30, 2009 at 11:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Talk about a sorry reason to be optomistic or excited about economic stimulation in Austin coming from a JAIL PROJECT!
How sad is that! Making more room and expecting for record numbers of jailbirds to be housed right in the middle of downtown Austin! Wow! What a future for the economic situation in Austin. (:
Posted by notsuprised (anonymous) on March 30, 2009 at 12:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
It is really something else. On one hand they argue that transporting is too dangerous, on the other hand they talk about how they could always rent out space to surrounding communities. So transporting out “bad” – transporting in “good”, in what upside down world does this make sense? Look at Albert Lea, now ICE is bringing God knows what sort of criminal element to their downtown. Keep in mind Albert Lea jailers, you don’t know what these people have or have not been vaccinated for.
Posted by Aletheia_Kratos (anonymous) on March 31, 2009 at 8:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
How many jobs are likely to be lost over the next 20 years with our double digit tax increases? How many more when you consider that the wind tax revenues could have produced tax reductions?
How many dollars are to be pulled from the private sector and devoted to this monstrous mayhem in our downtown? When totaled, the payments on the debt will be in excess of $40 million. Add to that the $7 million in reserves from the city and county that is being spent. Add to that the lost tax revenues from the destroyed commercial blocks (over $1 million in 20 years).
All for a flurry of construction work over 18 months and a handful of new jailer jobs. Now that it progress.
Posted by Aletheia_Kratos (anonymous) on March 31, 2009 at 8:33 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Yesterday, Mike Robbins was interviewed about his former building being torn down. He said, "I think this is the ultimate revitalization tool for our particular downtown . . . All those people are going to need goods and services, and so all the other remaining retailers around the area probably have a better chance of surviving," See KAALtv.com report.
Who are all these people who need goods and services one might naturally ask - not if you are a reporter, but if you are an inquiring mind. Let's see we can list them.
There are the judges - oh wait they have been in down town Austin for 150 years. There are the court administration staff - oh wait they have been in down town throughout their history. There are the court services personnel - oh wait they too have been in downtown forever. So who are these new people who have heretofore not been housed in our downtown.
Oh yes, I know. It is the prisoners who were here for 150 years, but who recently have been sleeping elsewhere. I am certain that men and women in orange jumpsuits are the clientele that Austin's merchants have been missing over the last few years. Before the orange jumpsuits began shopping near their jails in Osage and Albert Lea the downtown economy was booming. Right. Does anyone remember ten years ago when we had a fully functional jail downtown - was their commerce stimulated by jumpsuited shoppers? No?!? How can that be.
Here I thought that economic revitalization relied on that class of shopper. I thought our future depended on bringing that shopping class back to our downtown. If not them then who. It cannot be the handful of new jailers. We cannot be placing our trust in economic security on the shopping proclivities of such a small group, can we?
Who is it that Mike Robbins is suggesting will be flooding our downtown as soon as the jail is built? Inquiring minds want to know.
(Hint: for those following closely and thinking ahead, the answer is not the DHS jobs because there is no plan to bring them back down town. Talk but no plan. Ideas but no funding. Promises but no follow through.)
Posted by mnbtc (anonymous) on April 1, 2009 at 10:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Economic stimulus for who? They are talking cutting jobs, combining jobs and not filling vacant jobs in the county and the city of Austin. They suggest freezing their wages and having the employees take one day a month off. How is this a stimulus to the economy? So we stimulate a few and take away from many others. At what cost and to whom?
Are we giving a good deal for those who contribute little to the economy and taking away from the citizens who pay their fair share of taxes? The jail is not the problem or a solution. It is what the criminals do to society to land themselves in jail. We need to examine ways to stop the real problem-CRIME- not the symptom-a lack of jail space.
If the elected officials are determined to spend $30 million maybe they should balance the budget first.
The county gives many reasons why the jail is a good deal in todays economy. Is it in the best interest of the tax payers of Mower County to spend $30 million plus dollars in the worst economy since the depression? I am sure those who will or have lost their jobs will disagree.
Why is the elected officials main focus on spending money? Should the focus be completing and implementing the list of cuts they say are necessary to meet the budget? Their only priority seems to be on spending the tax payers dollars on a new jail because it is such a good deal in todays economy. How good of a deal is it to the taxpayers? Is it a good deal to those on a fixed income, or those losing their jobs, or those on unemployment, or the tax payers? Why are we even considering this in todays economy? If you purchase an item on sale that you do not need are you wasting money or are you saving money because it is a good deal?
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