Boone County animal-control center bids far exceed $800K budget - News - Rockford Register Star - Rockford, IL

 

• By Ben Stanley
  Rockford Register Star

  Posted Jun. 22, 2015 at 3:36 PM
  Updated Jun 22, 2015 at 11:57 PM

  BELVIDERE — Three bids Boone County received for building an animal-control center far exceed the architect's cost estimate last July.

  Voters approved a referendum in November to build the facility using $800,000 generated over three years by a small property tax increase.

  The referendum ended years of debate over how to pay for a new center. The state of the facility has been an issue for years. In 2010, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited it for several violations.

  The $800,000 estimate given by architect Mark Schmidt in July 2014 influenced the County Board's decision to seek that amount in the referendum. The county reached out to 10 contractors for the project; three submitted bids Friday:

  Sjostrom & Sons: $1,242,800.

  Rockford Structures Construction Co.: $1,099,000.

  Larson & Larson Builders: $1,080,800.

"Things have changed in the marketplace in the last year,"

Schmidt said. "We added square footage to the building and we're building in a different location. All of those things were variables I couldn't have estimated in 2014."

The original plans were for a 2,700-square-foot building on a lot off Highway 76 just north of Maple Crest Care Center. New plans call for a 3,500-square-foot building on a lot off Squaw Prairie Road just east of the original site.

The Roads and Capital Improvements Committee held a special meeting tonight  to review the county's options — scrap the current plans and take bids in 60 to 90 days for a cheaper design, find more money for the project, or make a commitment to the low bidder on the condition that costs are trimmed from the design to keep the building within budget while keeping its blueprint intact.

"We pushed for a tighter bid schedule than we probably should have," committee member Karl Johnson said during the meeting.

Without an additional funding source, and fearing that rejecting the bids to draft a new building design could set construction back another calendar year, the committee voted to make a conditional commitment to Larson & Larson, pending approval by Boone County State's Attorney Michelle Courier.

Schmidt listed 10 ways the county could shave costs from the design. Among them: decreasing superficial elements, such as the amount of stone siding on the building; and making interior changes, such as reducing the number of fenced stalls for animals. The new building keeps the same number of stalls as the old one.

"As I understand it, the capacity of the current building was never the problem, it was the quality of the building itself," Schmidt said.

Animal Services Operations Supervisor Roger Tresemer said he doesn't want the building's animal capacity to be reduced.

"Some of the niceties for the office areas could be brought aboard later," he said. "I thought ... the whole reason of building a new shelter was you'd have a safer, cleaner, easier-to-sanitize environment but still house at least the same number of animals."

Ben Stanley: 815-987-1369; bstanley@rrstar.com; @ben_j_stanley

By Ben Stanley
Rockford Register Star

Rockford Register Star

 

• Above is from:  Boone County animal-control center bids far exceed $800K budget - News - Rockford Register Star - Rockford, IL

Voice of the Reader: Rauner's union-busting ruse : Opinion

To the Editor:

You all sure bought the Rauner, anti-union rhetoric hook, line and sinker.

I guess I am one of those voracious union bosses since I led the teachers in Carterville for over 20 years. Decent contract, salaries and working conditions but not a cent in my pocket except what all the teachers got. The governor wants to see right-to-work legislation, which he hopes will do away with collective bargaining. Who benefits by that? Not the state but corporate Illinois wanting lower wages to increase their bottom line.

Whether workers are union or not, they benefit by union insistence on living wages and safe, decent working conditions. Right-to-work means no due process in firing and the right to work at lower wages.

Bringing 'business' to Illinois will happen, lower wages, little to no regulation and bigger bottom line are enticements. Of course, that means less taxes paid into state coffers, especially if you add in corporate tax breaks. Abusers to the system? There are due process rules so that shirkers can be fired. I have no sympathy for Speaker Madigan. Democrats have given the electorate what they demand but have not provided the revenues to to pay for services. The fat I see in Illinois are not in union and legislative pockets but in corporate pants and the generous salaries of the governor's appointed experts who will tell us how to provide more and pay less tax.

Do the math Illinois.

Marlene Koerner

Herrin

Voice of the Reader: Rauner's union-busting ruse : Opinion

Sales of Confederate flags are soaring - Yahoo Finance#

 

Alotta Signs of Sparks, Nev., typically sells about five Confederate flags per week. On Monday, however, 46 orders came in. Then South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for removing the stars and bars from her state's capitol grounds. The next morning, Alotta Signs logged 200 orders for Confederate flags, most of them through Amazon (AMZN). “We don’t even have the lowest price,” says Dave Pearson, owner and president of the company. “It’s nuts.”

 

The threat of scarcity often leads to a run on products -- such as guns, with sales typically spiking when there's talk of tightening regulations after mass shootings. And that appears to be the case for the Confederate flag, now under assault in the aftermath of the murder of nine worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Dylann Roof, the alleged murderer, posted several pictures of himself online with a Confederate flag and white supremacist symbols, stoking furor around a flag that has long been controversial. Many politicians who had defended the right of southern states to fly the flag changed their minds and said it should be relegated to museums. Walmart (WMT) and Sears (SHLD) said they would no longer sell Confederate flag merchandise.

But other retailers are benefiting from the controversy. On Monday, before Haley announced her change in position on the flag (which still must be approved by the state assembly), Amazon listed two Confederate flags among the 60 bestselling items under “Outdoor Flags and Banners”: one at the No. 5 spot, and one at No. 43. The following morning, five of the top 20 bestsellers in the category were Confederate flags, including the No. 1 bestseller, a 3-by-5 foot polyester model made by Rhode Island Novelty and sold by a company called Anley. Among the top 60, 12 were versions of the Confederate flag.

Sales of Confederate flags are soaring - Yahoo Finance#

Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » What’s the harm? Ask Pat Quinn

What’s the harm? Ask Pat Quinn

Monday, Jun 22, 2015

* From a News-Gazette editorial about Gov. Bruce Rauner’s new TV ads…

What’s going on here? There is an old political maxim — if you can’t make them see the light, you can make them feel the heat.

Rauner is trying to peel away enough of Madigan’s legislative caucus to persuade the all-powerful speaker to entertain a few of Rauner’s legislative proposals, including modifications to the state’s workers’-compensation law. […]

So while Rauner and legislative leaders continue to talk, the TV ads will continue to play.

It’s an odd way to do legislative business.

But Illinois has become an odd state, one in which some of its leaders cling desperately to a status quo that has failed the people of this state. In that context, how much more harm can Rauner’s TV ads do?

* Yes, this is about making MJM et al “feel the heat.” Agreed, even though this is a relatively light check into the boards. But how does that ad “peel away enough of Madigan’s legislative caucus to persuade the all-powerful speaker to entertain a few of Rauner’s legislative proposals”? I’m not quite understanding how the CN-G is arriving at that conclusion.

And, by the way, they aren’t talking.

Whenever somebody or some institution appear to be cheerleading for war, or at least cheerleading one side in a coming war, their claims and predictions should always be put under a microscope and compared to actual facts and history.

* Let’s revisit my Crain’s Chicago Business column for this week…

In July 2013, Gov. Pat Quinn vetoed lawmakers’ salaries and stipends out of the state budget. He “hit them in the wallet,” he said, to spur action on pension reform.

Instead, all legislative progress suddenly and completely stopped on pension reform for a few months until a court finally ruled that the governor’s veto was unconstitutional. No way were legislators going to let Quinn push them around.

I could very well be wrong, but if legislators wouldn’t cave to protect their own pocketbooks, what makes anyone think they’ll cry “Uncle!” over somebody else’s problems?

Plus, legislators surely know, as they did with Quinn, that they can’t allow a precedent like this to be set: getting Rauner’s approval on the budget by giving in on his legislative agenda. If Democrats capitulate now, then the governor will just do it all over again when next year’s budget negotiations begin.

And then there’s the impact of that Rauner ad about Madigan. […]

Judging by history, including the Quinn paycheck ordeal, I get where the speaker is coming from, to some extent.

As long as Rauner’s TV ads are on the air, Madigan probably is not going to move even a millimeter. Doing so only would invite more ads in the future.

As noted previously, the governor’s ad isn’t devastating the process right now. As soon as the ad eventually comes down the two sides can probably resume talking. I just don’t see Madigan talking until then, however.

Then again, it’s not like he was talking all that much before the ads went up.

- Posted by Rich Miller

Above is from:  Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » What’s the harm? Ask Pat Quinn