More than nine years after Chatham County announced plans to build an up-to-date facility to ensure more comprehensive, organized responses to hurricanes and other natural disasters, county officials have approved a contract to build it.
At the urging of its chairman, Chester Ellis, the Chatham County Commission on May 23 awarded a $78.8 million contract to build the emergency operations center to Reeves Young, a construction firm with headquarters near Atlanta.
The commission’s 6-2 vote followed some 15 minutes of mostly skeptical comments from two commissioners who voted against the award to Reeves Young. Ellis and those commissioners who supported it said little.
The vote culminated years of missteps and delays for a project that was as at one point scheduled to be completed in late 2023 or 2024 and cost $41.6 million.
It also comes months after Ellis shut down a previous round of bidding due to improper communications between bidders and county commissioners and more than a year after he led a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of proposed center even though, unbeknownst to many other officials and the public, there was no contractor to build it.
He later acknowledged the omission but said it was necessary so the county would not lose a federal government of $8 million.
The latest round of bidding for the lucrative contract to build the center on Gulfstream Road near the Savannah-Hilton International Airport involved seven construction firms. All were deemed qualified by the county to take on the project. Four were identified in a May 25 memo to the commission as being locally based firms.
But with the heavy backing of Ellis, Reeves Young prevailed. Its headquarters are located in Sugar Hill, 40 miles northeast of Georgia’s capital.
A team of management consultants hired by the county determined that Reeves Young provided the “best value,” even though its offer exceeded by $7.7 million the lowest one by Eastern Contractors and by $5 million the bid from Charles Perry Partners, Inc.
In the minutes leading up to the vote on the contract, Commissioner Wayne Noha (District 1) made his dissent clear. “I will not vote to spend $7 million more on a non-local vendor over a local contractor that is qualified.”
But why “best value” doesn’t necessarily mean less cost in the view of Ellis and other county officials was explained in a memo to the chairman and the commission on May 23 by the county’s emergency management agency, Dennis Jones, and signed off by county manager Michael Kaigler. Wrote Jones:
“Chatham County has adopted the Best Value approach to evaluating these proposals. Best value contracting transcends the traditional focus on lowest price and considers a broader spectrum of factors that contribute to the overall success and long-term value of a project.”
Unscheduled presentation
A vote on the contract for the emergency operations center — formally known as the “multi-agency public safety facility” — was originally scheduled for the commission’s meeting on May 12.
But Ellis, the commission’s chair, removed it from the agenda after several commissioners said they needed time to review Ellis’ recommendation to award the contract to Reeves Young, according to commission spokesman Will Peebles.
After the meeting, the Atlanta-based consulting firms hired by Chatham County to manage the operations center contract and other capital projects in the county gave an unscheduled presentation to commissioners pressing them to vote for a contractor that was not the lowest or a local bidder.
The presentation by representatives of AECOM and H.J. Russell was not included in any public agenda, packet or video of the meeting. The two firms, along with RG Media Affiliates, have project management contracts with the county totaling at least $3.6 million.
‘Pretty major’
Ellis has ties to the three companies.
The CEO of RG Media Affiliates is Robert Gould, who also served as Chester Ellis’ campaign manager in the last two elections.
Also, H.J. Russell and its executives donated $5,800 to Ellis’ campaigns in 2020 and 2024, according to campaign finance records.
Commissioners previously have raised questions about a possible conflict of interest for Ellis on the contracting for the emergency operations center — allegations he has denied. Commissioner Dean Kicklighter (District 7) did so again at the May 23 meeting.
On county business, Kicklighter said he owed the public full disclosure over any relationship that might be a conflict of interest or appear to do so and recuse himself if necessary.
“Full disclosure should be given to the public of a relationship that’s pretty major,” Kicklighter said, referring to the operations center contract bid.
Ellis did not reply to Kicklighter’s remarks. He left it to county attorney R. Jonathan Hart to clarify the bidding process and to two commissioners — Aaron “Adot” Whitely (District 6) and Bobby Lockett (District 3) — to dispute the location of the headquarters of one of the losing bidders.