Last week's article about the cost of the village administration's new building created quite a buzz: it generated callers to the local radio station and several dozen comments on our website, several of which took the Ellenville Journal to task for possible discrepancies in reporting the correct figures regarding the cost of renovating the former Provident Bank/Ellenville Bank building's basement and first few floors.

As the numbers were first reported in the 'Local Government' section of the September 27 edition of the Ellenville Journal, the initial bids given by the project's contractors, DiLorenzo, GH Mechanical, Stone Ridge Electric and TJ Kempton, totaled $468,990.

Also appearing in that edition were the figures for the village's architectural and engineering expenses from Barton and Loguidice (B&L), which totaled $229,700 up to that point.

B&L's “soft cost,” as termed by Mayor Jeff Kaplan, was never made available to the public prior to the September 24 village board meeting because, based on the Ellenville Journal's records as well as that of two administration officials, B&L did not offer a projected cost for their services.

“Some of the confusion [about the village hall budget] was caused by Barton and Loguidice,” said Mayor Jeff Kaplan.

The total spent as of September 24 by the village was $845,936, which means that after the original bids and the architectural and engineering costs have been subtracted, the project is $147,000, or roughly 30%, over the initial bids from the four contractors.

Kaplan and Auerbach have stressed that $1 million is the actual amount of money that the village budgeted for the building's renovations. Included in the village's overall budget of $1 million, says Kaplan, are the village's moving expenses and funds needed to purchase chairs for the first floor courtroom.

Kaplan, Village Manager Elliott Auerbach and Trustee Steve Krulick have all referred to the new village hall project as, “a million and a million,” meaning that the building would cost $1 million to purchase and another $1 million to renovate.

“From the start we thought of this as the 'not-the-Ulster-County Jail' project,” said Kaplan, referring to the county project that has been the focus of much scrutiny as it has suffered massive cost overruns and allegations of corruption.

Village officials explained in last week's Journal that those items, known as change orders, are the reason for the significant overage from the initial bids. One of the most costly change orders, involving the building's fire alarm system, was apparently due to the fact that the building's 'as-built' plans were inaccurate.

“Basically, the system that they showed on the drawings was not the system that was actually installed back in 1989,” says Schug. “Once they actually started taking walls down and looking at the kind of wiring that was in place from the old fire alarm system, it wasn't the same system that was on paper per se, from the existing building. So it was different than what the village and our engineers were led to believe from the previous plans.”

Glen Gidaly, speaking on behalf of Barton and Loguidice, had the same explanation, but also cited the village's need to make sure that all floors of the building comply with current fire codes, not only the three floors for which the original bid had stipulated.

In a phone interview, Kaplan argued the necessity to keep the 'big picture' in mind as he explained that the cost for a proposed new building would have cost nearly $5 million dollars and that the village's decision to use only the building's lower floors saved on the cost of adding a second elevator.

“By far, this option is so much cheaper to remedy a situation that has been going on for the past ten years,” said Kaplan.

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