Chatham County’s long-awaited emergency operations center will cost at least another $1 million and won’t be completed until after the 2027 hurricane season, according to project officials.
The updated completion for the multi-agency public safety facility, construction of which was approved in 2025, is now November 2027, according to information presented Friday to the county commissioners. In April, project managers had forecasted a completion next September.
The progress report, jointly presented by a six-person team of emergency management, engineering, architecture, and contracting leaders, gave contradictory information to the county commissioners and incomplete data about total costs, according to one commissioner.
Program manager John Wright told commissioners that building construction had reached the half way point. He did not provide documentation to confirm what parts of the job were included in this statistic. The 50% figure was not cited in the slides presented by leaders at the meeting.
Instead, the top slide prepared for the meeting described the project completion rate at 42%. In another place of the presentation, however, progress as of June was estimated to be 41%
Commissioners, meanwhile, voted to approve a $1.1 million change order requested by Reeves Young, the general contractor for the project. The additional money was needed, they said, to address issues such as technology updates and soil replacement, as well as to keep the project up to code, which has changed since the start of construction.
The vote to approve the additional funding passed 9-0, and brings the total costs of the building to at least $80 million.
District 1 Commissioner Anthony Noha expressed concern that the total taxpayer cost was not included in the information presented by the leadership team. He mentioned in his criticism of the coast overruns that a redundant water supply contract was not included in the total cost nor was it noted in total change orders.
Dennis Jones of Chatham Emergency Management responded that water was a separate contract – also won by Reeves Young – and thus was not counted.
“To me, it’s a little misleading because it was a change order to the original design,” Noha said. “We need to track every expense that goes into this, so that we know at the end of the day that it cost this amount of money.”
“Anything in addition to the $78.8 [million], I think it should be tracked and I think it should be on anything we present for transparency purposes,” he added.
The request for a total campus cost was seconded by Commissioner Aaron “Adot” Whitely. Whitely raised concerns about the degree of cooperation between the project officials and minority contractors.
Project manager Robert Gould, told the commissioners that $8 million has of work been awarded so far to subcontractors owned and operated by local, women and minority business leaders. Gould, who was also Chairman Chester Ellis’s former campaign manager, also said that 68% of total expenses were projected to go to local and minority contractors.
Closing the gap between promise and reality was responsibility of a joint venture partner, Technique Concrete, according to Reeves Young executives. That company had failed to attend an estimated 50 meetings, according to Mike Iezzi of Reeves Young.
“I can’t force them to be a part of the project. They are invited to be a part of the project throughout the whole process,” he said. “I can’t help it if they don’t.”
The news prompted an outcry from some commissioners, including District 7 Commissioner Dean Kicklighter and Chairman Ellis.
“It’s absolute insanity to pay anybody for work that’s not being done,” said Kicklighter.
“We don’t want anybody not on that site getting paid, right?” added Ellis. “If they’re not doing anything, don’t you give them a penny, all right?”
Commissioners also unanimously approved a motion to rename the facility the Russell E. Abolt Public Safety Complex, in honor of the former Chatham County manager.