MOULTRIE, Ga. — Colquitt County commissioners voted Tuesday to go ahead with a parking lot at the new Public Works Building under construction on County Farm Road, despite reservations about the large price tag.

Of the six commissioners who voted, only Chris Hunnicutt voted against accepting a bid from Hancock and Sons for three parking lots, including the Public Works lot, at a total cost of $1.37 million. The bid was the lowest of three the county received. .

Commission Chairman Denver Braswell also opposed accepting the bid, but he can vote only in the case of a tie among the other commissioners.

Hancock and Sons bid $181,064 to pave an expansion at the county Maintenance Building, $290,799 to create a new parking lot across Second Street from the Courthouse Annex, and $822,988 to make a parking lot at the Public Works Building. The cost of the Public Works lot was by far the largest item in the other bids as well.

One reason the the Public Works lot is so much more expensive than the others is its size. It’s actually two lots, one for employees and one for the department’s equipment, with a paved cut-through from one lot to the other. The employee lot is roughly the size of the proposed lot on Second Street and the equipment lot is about an acre.

The other reason for the cost is the amount of dirt that will need to be replaced to stabilize the ground beneath the parking lot, according to discussion at multiple commission meetings. 

The bids were opened Jan. 27, and the commission took up the issue Feb. 15 when Braswell named commissioners Hunnicutt, Mike Boyd and Johnny Hardin  to a committee that would look into ways to reduce the cost of the Public Works lot. After meeting twice with the county administrator and county engineer, the committee offered some adaptations at the commission’s March 1 meeting. 

None of the options presented by the committee addressed the cost of stabilizing the ground under the parking lot, although discussions among commissioners did. Braswell and Hunnicutt urged their fellow commissioners to grade the lot so water would flow off it, possibly add rocks to discourage erosion, but not to pave it with asphalt or do the underground work that the county engineer had called for.

The primary difference between the three options the committee presented was the material with which the lot would be covered. Committee members recommended against using rocks. The county engineer recommended asphalt, and Boyd and Hardin supported that recommendation. A compromise using Graded Aggregate Base, a rock aggregate, would save $81,000, according to the committee’s presentation, and it would leave the option open for the county to asphalt the lot with its own equipment — but the estimated cost of doing so would be $98,500.

None of that was addressed in the actual vote taken Tuesday night, which was a simple yes-or-no on whether to accept Hancock and Sons’ bid on the original plans for the projects. Now the county will try to implement savings through change orders, but that comes with two dangers: Change orders will cause a change in materials cost from the original bid while materials costs have been rising; and if changes are too significant, state law will require the project to be rebid.

Boyd has been vocal about wanting to do a good job with the parking lot, despite the expense.

“I want to spend enough money to do a good job and look like we have a professional organization,” he said at the March 1 meeting.

In discussions during the meetings, Boyd’s position was supported by Hardin and by Commissioner Paul Nagy. Commissioners Barbara Jelks and Marc DeMott were mostly silent during the discussions but voted in favor of the bid.

Braswell and Hunnicutt opposed it, arguing a parking lot wasn’t worth the money that the project will cost. 

“In the real world, with a real budget, nobody does this,” Braswell said at the March 15 meeting. “… I don’t see us using the government’s money like the people use their own.”

In an unrelated matter, the Board of Commissioners voted to abandon Baldy Road following a public hearing that was attended by no one.