HOMER – The Banks County Commission is not pleased with the quality of work that has been performed at the county’s senior center and Tuesday night voted to fire the construction firm contracted for the work early last year.
Following closed session with County Attorney Randall Frost to discuss litigation Tuesday night, the commission voted 4-0 to terminate BM&K Construction Inc. as contractor on the senior center project effective immediately.
“I make a motion that we terminate the contract with BM&K as of right now, and send them a letter of termination tomorrow morning,” Commissioner Charles Turk said.
That motion was seconded, with all four commissioners in attendance voting in favor.
Earlier in the meeting, lifelong Banks County resident Chris Ausburn appealed to commissioners not to accept the building due to its poor quality.
Ausburn was contacted to pressure wash the concrete around the facility, but said he saw firsthand the problems with the building and declined..
“This is not a job that the eighth-grade agriculture class did as a school project,” Ausburn said. “This is almost a million-dollar project that should be beautiful and something that we as citizens should be proud of. It is not. Please do not accept this building. I believe the citizens will stand behind whatever has to be done to get this right.”
Following the meeting, Turk addressed some of the issues he and other commissioners have with the work performed by BM&K.
“We had a contract with BM&K to redo the senior center, and we have been having problems all along with the workmanship and have brought it to their attention numerous occasions, pretty much every week, and they have tried to fix a few of the things, but they’re still not satisfactory and it’s got to the point where they just can’t seem to get a crew in there that can do good workmanship so at this point it’s time to end the contract. They’re already behind schedule. They haven’t done a whole lot of work and when they do come and do work it’s not good craftsmanship, good work, so at this point it’s time to end the contract and move on to the next step of us getting somebody to come in there and finish the center.”
Commissioners signed an $884,871 contract with BM&K on Jan. 23, 2018, to perform the renovation and expansion work at the senior center on Thompson Street.
Around that same time, commissioners agreed to temporarily relocate senior center programs and Meals on Wheels to the basement of Banks County Farm Bureau. That was nearly a year and a half ago, and the senior center still is not complete or ready to be occupied.
And it is unknown right now when the work might be completed or if it might cost taxpayers additional money to correct the errors.
“We’re hoping we can start getting some bids immediately,” Turk said. “It’s kind of hard to say the timeframe because a lot of these contractors are on jobs right now so I would venture to say we’re probably looking at two to three months.”
Asked what created the urgency for terminating the contract at this time, Turk said some issues arose last week that made commissioners realize things with BM&K crews were not going to improve.
“They had done some work about a week ago that was pretty much the last straw for me and Commissioner [Sammy] Reece, and the other commissioners went and looked at it and we met with one of their employees Thursday afternoon, maybe Friday, and showed him the type workmanship that we’re looking at and that this was totally unacceptable,” Turk said. “I think at that point that was pretty much the last straw because obviously they were not going to do a good job fixing what they had already not done good.”
Asked whether Ausburn’s comments prompted Tuesday night’s decision, Turk said it was a coincidence with the timing of Tuesday night’s meeting, adding that meeting was pretty much to address the senior center and allow Ausburn to speak since he signed up late last week, with a few other agenda items added.
“We had already heard concerns from citizens,” Turk said.
Turk provided some of the reasons for commissioners’ decision, saying the firm didn’t do things right on the first or second attempt in many cases.
“The drywall was not finished correctly and had to be redone, and therefore they had to paint it twice,” Turk said. “In doing that, they just took and ripped the baseboard out and therefore made more problems they did not fix. The ceiling tiles are not straight. The drains in the kitchen are above grade, which means the water is not going to drain into them.”
And those are just the problems commissioners have observed inside the senior center building.
“Outside, they had to put the roof on twice because they put shingles on top of wet decking and it started warping so they had to take all of that off and put a whole new roof on it,” Turk said. “Where they cut the beams, it was not very good cuts. And the plates that they put on it to brace it and make it sturdier were not cut correctly – I think they were just measured with a ruler instead of actually making templates to do it correctly. We’ve still got some gutter problems. We’ve still got some drain problems. A little bit of concrete problem we’ve still got, so it’s still a pretty good bit of work.”
Asked how the county will pay for the extra work to correct what has been done improperly or that remains to be done, Turk said commissioners have money not paid to the contractor.
“We do have some retainage right now,” Turk said. “We don’t really know for sure because we haven’t gotten some estimates in, but we feel pretty sure that we’ve got enough money held to cover it.”
