…but probably not. The JC/AOC’s version of giving the public a voice is to give them an hour to express an opinion, followed by promptly ignoring that opinion.
On Wednesday, Justice Brad Hill’s court facilities working group (the clueless group that approves some of the world’s most expensive light bulbs and public buildings) will hold a meeting this Wednesday to quickly make recommendations on how to spend 350 million dollars less this year in their court facilities program. While one would have believed that someone in charge would have applied the brakes sooner so that the Office of Court Construction & Management didn’t rush out and spend their allotment without a cohesive plan and blow their whole wad, this doesn’t appear to be the case. With a 350 million dollar cut to their construction program, things have been going full steam ahead on every project in the pipeline as if the funding cut never happened. “Business as usual” has been a common theme leaking from the AOC.
We think that this is all about politics, to pretend to Sacramento that they’re actually doing something about their wasteful court facilities program. Much like they did with the so called ‘pause’ to ccms – also lofted with suspect timing to prevent legislative intervention.
A third of the fiscal year into this years program it appears the JC/AOC has just begun to realize that their budget has been cut and that it might have some impact on their construction program. It appears that they may have to reconsider the pace and their priorities.
Many of you are unaware that Justice Hill was spearheading the court transfer process and negotiating CFP or county facility payments for individual courthouses. What only a few are aware of is that Mr. Hill gave away the store with a program labeled “transfer is the answer” where transferring the buildings to state control was far more important that actually gaining enough money from the counties to maintain the buildings. Ultimately, it was Mr. Brad Hill and his previous court facilities transfer committee that indirectly chose to fund courthouse maintenance with a majority of state funds.
Many of the Office of Court Construction & Management’s most vocal critics have been the locals where the courthouses are being built. The AOC was kind enough to hold public meetings with the locals and promptly ignored them as well. Recently, JCW was provided some information on the Mammoth Lakes Courthouse that we would like to share with our readers about the AOC being tone deaf.
Mammoth Lakes Courthouse
First off, the main function of the Mammoth Lakes Courthouse is to process speeding tickets off the Hwy 395 corridor. In fact, several courthouses are being established off the hwy 395 corridor – one of the least traveled major highways in California. Second, Mammoth Lakes is a rustic community. This rustic community is now straddled with an ugly, expensive modern out of place looking state courthouse that a) Has a flat roof in a place where snow drifts can get over 10 feet high and b) is so ugly that the locals have demanded a monument be put up with an unverified price tags of about a million dollars to block the view of the out-of-place courthouse from the street.
This new courthouse will cost the people of the state of California 5 times as much per year to own and operate over the previously leased space, yet there is no corresponding traffic increase on Hwy 395 or population increase in Mono County to justify spending 20 million dollars. This holds true with the other Hwy 395 ticket processing courts from Susanville to Mojave. Every project could afford to be re-scoped and dramatically downsized.
As if these epic failures to plan and listen to the public were not enough – we hear that the old Mammoth Lakes court leased space had 4 years remaining on a 150K per year lease in another flat / leaky roof building. Sources tell us that the termination of this lease will result in the AOC paying an extra 600K to rent the commercial space they won’t be using. Extraordinary planning brought to you by the AOC and the Judicial Council’s court facilities working group. Insiders on this project tell us this thousand dollar per square foot building suffers from ‘a compromised design that will shorten the life span of the building’.
We would suggest that all readers drop a note to our friends at the Office of Court Construction & Management and the trial court facilities working group. That note should outline outrage about the all-inclusive price per square foot that is being paid for these courthouses – and not just the construction price tag. If the all inclusive price tag to build a courthouse exceeds an all-inclusive 500.00 per square foot, then it shouldn’t be built. Most of these costs will boil down to the materials choices, a deflation of the trial court facilities standards and all other costs not associated with construction. With respect to that last item, all costs not associated with construction can be quite expensive and needs to be looked at. Case in point, the Los Angeles Mental Health Court is OCCM’s flagship of waste coming in at $1,900.10 per square foot. The AOC declares that the courthouse construction costs will only be $637.00 per square foot. $1,263.00 per square foot goes in to the “other costs” column. recently, this project appears to have increased from two courtrooms to three.
Almost twice as much per square foot is in the other costs column as the construction costs column. Surely, this building can be built for less.
Written Comments Preferred
The working group prefers written comments but will accommodate in-person comments as well. Comments may be e-mailed to occmcomments@jud.ca.gov or mailed or delivered to:
Administrative Office of the Courts
Attn: Comments to Court Facilities Working Group
455 Golden Gate Ave., 8th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
Comments received by 1 p.m. on October 18, 2011, will be distributed to working group members at the meeting. The same e-mail address and postal address will remain open to the public at any time to comment on the facilities program or the work of the working group.
In-person comments can be made during the first hour of the working group’s meeting on October 19, 2011, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., which will be reserved for public comment. The meeting will be held in the Malcolm M. Lucas Boardroom on the third floor of the Hiram W. Johnson State Building, 455 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco (map ).
Speakers will be limited to 3 to 5 minutes, depending on the volume of requests, and scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis. To reserve time to speak, please send your request by e-mail to occmcomments@jud.ca.gov or mail or deliver your request to Administrative Office of the Courts, Attn: Comments to Court Facilities Working Group, 455 Golden Gate Ave., 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94102.
Please state:
• The speaker’s name, occupation, and (if applicable) name of the entity that the speaker represents;
• The speaker’s email address, telephone number, and mailing address; and
• The courthouse project to be commented on, or the nature of the speaker’s interest in the SB 1407 program.
Give them a piece of your mind.
More on the AOC’s construction program can be found here.
___________________________________________________________________
Courthouse News – California Court Construction Costs Tower Above National Average
The Recorder – Capital Accounts: With Construction Money Mostly Gone, Court Planners Redo Wish List (paid article)
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JusticeCalifornia
October 18, 2011
Check this out, regarding Merced’s courthouse built in 2007. This project was managed by the County of Merced rather than the CJ/JC/AOC:
http://www.courts.ca.g0v/facilities-merced-downtown.htm
Courtrooms: 6
Square footage: 57,600
Total cost: $19,700,000
Project manager: County of Merced
Completed: 2Q 2007
And then check this out, regarding the CJ/JC/AOC’s in-progress Merced Los Banos project:
http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-merced-losbanos.htm
Courtrooms: 2
Square footage: 29,511
Estimated total cost: $32,208,000
Estimated construction cost per square foot: $640
Current status: Site selection and acquisition
Expected completion: 1Q 2014
What is wrong with this picture? (Pre-2008 economic crisis) Merced County can build a nicely designed functional courthouse with six courtrooms for under $20 million, but the CJ/JC/AOC have to spend over $32 million to build 2 courtrooms in a depressed construction market?
Next, compare the project managed by Merced County (6 courtrooms for under $20 million), to the cost of other CJ/JC/AOC in-progress projects:
Like Siskiyou’s planned 6 courtroom courthouse
http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-siskiyou.htm
Facts
Courtrooms: 6
Square footage: 86,163
Estimated total cost: $95,370,000
Estimated construction cost per square foot: $585
Current status: Site selection and acquisition
Expected completion: 4 Q 2014
I absolutely love gorgeous, rural Siskiyou County, but cannot believe it can POSSIBLY cost $95,000,000 to build a 6-courtroom courthouse there ($75 million more than the 6-courtroom $20 million Merced courthouse). Hey CJ/JC/AOC– maybe you should give Siskiyou County and its courts the $95,000,000, let them plan and build their own courthouse, and let them keep what they have left over in order to best serve their public. (Maybe some Siskiyou stakeholders can voice their opinions?)
Check out the CJ/JC/AOC plans for other courthouses in small communities:
Nevada County: http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-nevada.htm
Courtrooms: 6
Square footage: 83,782
Estimated total cost: $107,933,000
Estimated construction cost per square foot: $567
Current status: Site selection and acquisition
Expected completion: 3Q 2015
Alpine County: http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-alpine.htm
Facts
Courtrooms: 1
Square footage: 14,841
Estimated total cost: $26,372,000
Estimated construction cost per square foot: $699
Current status: Project is being re-scoped
Expected completion: 4Q 2014
Tuolumne: http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-tuolumne.htm
Facts
Courtrooms: 5
Square footage: 66,724
Estimated total cost: $69,236,000
Estimated construction cost per square foot: $610
Current status: Site selection and acquisition
Expected completion: 4 Q 2014
Placer : http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-placer.htm
Facts
Courtrooms: 1
Square footage: 15,000
Estimated total cost: $27,489,000
Estimated construction cost per square foot: $747
Current status: Site selection and acquisition
Expected completion: 2 Q 2015
Butte: http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-butte.htm
Facts
Courtrooms: 5
Square footage: 67,443
Estimated total cost: $76,947,000
Estimated construction cost per square foot: $634
Current status: Architectural design: preliminary plans
Expected completion: 1 Q 2014
Lassen: http://www.courts.ca.gov/facilities-lassen.htm
Facts
Courtrooms: 3
Square footage: 42,320
Estimated total cost: $38,937,000
Current status: Construction
Expected completion: 1Q 2012
Hey, have fun, check out all the projects for yourselves:
http://www.courts.ca.gov/2559.htm
Then read this article posted above by JCW : http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/10/14/40644.htm
which has this quote:
“Data from RS Means, a company specializing in construction cost estimating, puts its highest construction cost for courthouses at $269 per square foot in New York City. It estimates that a courthouse in San Diego should cost about $195 per square foot, including the cost of union labor — an amount that is less than half of the AOC’s estimate..”
Then ask yourselves and the CJ/JC/AOC a) why their projects cost so much more to build, than it cost Merced County to build its $20 million courthouse; and b) how it could possibly cost so much more to build a courthouse in a rural CA county, than it costs to build a courthouse in New York City. What am I missing?
Merced County has proven that counties can a) build their own beautiful courthouses for a fraction of what the CJ/JC/AOC are ALLEGEDLY spending, and b) give their locals valuable work.
Nathaniel Woodhull
October 18, 2011
Brad Hill was one of HRH-1’s golden children. He was placed on the CJA Board when Mize and Friedman led the takeover and was one of the AOC’s most able earners in the process.
It is widely thought that Brad will be named to replace Bill Vickrey, rather than the expected heir of Ron Overholt.
If true, then Brad can do for the entire branch that which he and his committee have done for the CFWB.
JusticeCalifornia
October 18, 2011
It would certainly appear that someone has been and is making a killing on these overinflated court construction budgets. Follow the money.
When is the Governor or the legislature going to stepp in to demand a top to bottom audit of the JC/AOC, with specific emphasis on OCCM and CCMS? BILLIONS of dollars appear to be going down the drain, at taxpayer expenses. How much more evidence do they need to see?
Judicial Council Watcher
October 18, 2011
6.5 billion in over-inflated court construction costs + 3 billion in CCMS + 500K in inevitable cost overruns = California’s 10 billion dollar reality check.
A group of people is making a killing on all of these programs. Unfortunately for the California taxpayers, they have no say whatsoever over this creative end-run around prop 13 that calls a tax a fee assessment, thus permitting these wasteful expenditures.
anonymous
October 19, 2011
It goes without saying that this group of judges doesn’t know anything about what reasonable construction costs might look like.
Convincing them that they’re not correct is a losing battle because judges don’t make or admit to mistakes. My vote is for “probably not”.