I do not support the county's plan for a new municipal building because the size of the building and the project budget have grown to a level that I feel can not be justified. An additional 10 million dollars has been added to the budget beyond the 15.8 million originally allocated to the project. As I see it this is a step in the wrong direction.
On Feburary 25th the council approved a space plan for the new building consisting of 49,000 square feet as the base, with the option for an additional 16,000 square foot records and archive center. I do not agree with the assumptions underlying this space plan. First the GSA standards for net assignable square feet cited in the plan in my view do not reflect the high cost of property in Los Alamos, relative to other communities of similar size. Second, a grossing factor of 1.35 was used in the space plan to determine gross square feet from net assignable square feet. In my opinion this factor is entirely arbitrary. The GSA standards do not provide guidance on how to choose this factor. One can make the building as large as desired by adjusting the grossing factor. Third, the space plan assumes an average office space of 132 square feet (11' by 12') with some offices being as large as 160 square feet. Wouldn't most people be comfortable with an office having 100 square feet, especially since provisions have been made for conference rooms in the new building?
A better estimate of the required space for the new building, which will house approximately 170 staff, is the space that was occupied by these employees, primarily in the old Annex building on Trinity Drive and the old municipal building. This has been estimated as 36,000 square feet. It is desirable to have room for expansion, but is hard for me to imagine any future scenario where the county workforce grows enough to justify a 49,000 square foot building, particularly in light of the fact that judicial functions now take place in a separate facility.
For me another troubling component of the project is the 14,000 square foot add alternate proposal for the new records and archive center adjacent to the municipal building. We are currently using 8000 square feet of space at the Airport Basin facilities to store county records and the historical archive has been kept in Fuller Lodge for some time, using 3000 square feet. I agree that it is desirable to move some of the materials in the historical archive from Fuller Lodge, to better preserve both the archive materials and Fuller Lodge itself. I feel that the ideal location for some of our historic archive materials is the Community Building, which has approximately 13,000 square feet of space. This building will be vacated after the new municipal building is built. In my view the Community Building is more than adequate to accomodate future storage needs for the historic archive and county records. Furthermore I feel it is more desirable to have the historic materials located in close proximity to Fuller Lodge.
I do not see the need for a new 14,000 square foot record and archive building, especially when 4,000 square feet of this space is being proposed not for storage but as an administrative area. I do not support hiring additional staff to occupy this administrative space for the county records function. I am extremely pleased with the tremendous progress that has been made during the past year by our records administrator and her staff, who have reduced the number of boxes containing public records from 5400 to less than 2000. They implemented an efficient system to catalog public records and dispose of limited retention items after the county is no longer required to keep them. Considering all of the public records held by the county approximately 30% are limited retention items. The recent progress in reducing our public records has been made without a dedicated new facility for county records. I disagree with the argument that relatively strict temperature and humidity controls, as prescribed by the NARA organization, are necessary and these features can only be implemented in a new facility. Although the kinds of measures outlined by NARA are helpful, they are not a legal requirement; there are no legal requirements for the manner in which public records are stored.
The budget for this project is bloated with 6 million dollars being allocated beyond the contract cost of 19.5 million for the design and construction of the facility itself including the record center. The 6 million dollar amount assumes a 10% contingency for the project as well as costs for the project management and relevant GRT expenditures. These three items amount to 3.3 million, yet there remains an additional 2.7 million in the budget. I put the question to the staff as to what costs this extra 2.7 million will be used to cover and I did not receive a clear or satisfying answer. If there isn't a compelling need for this money to be in the municipal building budget, I would rather allocate it for other CIP projects that arguably would benefit many more people in our community, such as the White Rock library, ice rink improvements, Ashley pond improvements and teen center.
There is one message that I hear from our citizens and it comes across loud and clear: the citizens don't want another bloated and exuberant government building. In my opinion building a municipal building that is much larger than required and constructing a record center that is redundant at best does very little to benefit our citizens, rather these decisions only ensure more profit for construction companies. I appreciate the need for a new municipal building, but the council should listen to the concerns of the 1600 people who signed the municipal building petition and cut out the pork from this municipal building plan, which is now a true municipal monstrosity.
