PROCEEDINGS HELD BEFORE THE BALDWIN COUNTY COMMISSION
(Budget Deliberations)
Friday, August 13, 2009

COUNTY COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:

Wayne Gruenloh
Charles "Skip" Gruber
Frank Burt
David Bishop

ALSO PRESENT:

Michael Thompson, County Administrator
David Brewer, Assistant County Administrator
Ron Cink, Budget Director
Kyle Baggett, Clerk/Treasurer
Elizabeth Smith, Accounting
Susan Lovett, Personnel Director

MR. CAL MARKERT: The 1-10 service road. I -- I hate to bring this up, but I -- I got -- I need to. This thing has drug on longer than I would have liked. And I feel like we may could have done better. But I don't know what else we could do with the -- We're bogged down with the Corps of Engineers right now. We're building, of course, the service road. AL DOT is designing and building the interchange. Right here is a creek. It comes around back through here. That's actually D'Olive Creek. It comes down here and gets into Lake Forest's lake. There's a ton of environmentalists watching this. And they're doing studies all up in here right now, paid for by the City of Daphne and -- and Fish and Wildlife. So the Corps is like dealing with extremely --

MR. MICHAEL THOMPSON: Visible stuff.

MR. CAL MARKERT: -- intense, visible projects. And the problem is, this creek right here, we're so high with our fill -- we're about sixty-five feet of dirt on top of the creek. And when we looked at our geo-technical report, that much dirt was so heavy that over a time period of five or ten years, it would -- if -- if we piped the creek right where it is, it would squish the pipe and it'd -- eventually, the road would fail over a period of five or ten years, or so they -- the engineer said. So we're having to move the creek over to a regular sand, clay area, get it out of the swampland, and pipe it. And the Corps doesn't want us to do that.  They're wanting us to bridge it. We were planning on putting the culverts here and here. We're having to bridge those now. So what I've got here is -- We had a company in Birmingham designing this, because they did the environmental work. They had to redo the environment thing. And that's what AL DOT wanted. We finished that contract. We paid them about -- I'm guessing ninety-five percent, got all their files, and we're finishing -- All the road design was practically finished. But when the Corps is making us change from culverts to bridges, I -- I've got to design two bridges, possibly three. And that's where we may need some more money.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: And that's the two hundred thousand that you have down here?

MR. CAL MARKERT: Right.

MR. MICHAEL THOMPSON: That's for the design work; right?

MR. CAL MARKERT: Right.

MR. MICHAEL THOMPSON: What are --

MR. CAL MARKERT: The bridges are going to cost -- We -- we just don't know yet, probably two million. But the construction costs right now are twenty percent less than what it's -- this estimate was submitted on. So we -- I still there think there's a chance we can bid it for the money, the price we have budgeted.

MR. MICHAEL THOMPSON: Including the bridges.

MR. CAL MARKERT: I just -- What I'm down about is how long it's taking to get it finished. An we're doing the best we can. We've -- I think we're on the right track. What the Corps really wants us to do is satisfy these people so that when they're -- they -- they advertise, they're not getting a bunch of negative comments and getting sued over it. So we had talked about -- Well, see this -- this creek right here comes -- That's D'Olive Creek. It -- it has drawn out a lot of sand in places. It's like a forty-foot-deep gully. And all that sand is gone. And they've done plans and a project to restore that and make it more natural, the best they could. And they're working on sections of it. And what I want to do is ask the Corps to let us go ahead and just pipe this little creek. And we'll mitigate by paying
Daphne X amount of money, which wouldn't have us on the hook and involved in their project, it'll just get us our mitigation points for doing our project. But I don't want to get into this project, because that thing will not stay stable.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: That's right.

MR. CAL MARKERT: That creek is going to be a problem from now on.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: Yeah.

MR. CAL MARKERT: So -- But we're talking to the Timbercreek Homeowners Association, trying to acquire the rights to put this in conservation forever right here. And we're talking with the Timbercreek Company to by this creek. But the Corps said, you know, that's good. But we want -- we're going to need to talk to Daphne.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: Okay.  Commissioner Burt.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: That was what I was going to say. And he solved it. We get involved in that with Daphne, that's been going on the twenty years I've been here.
 
FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: Right.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: It'll be going on fifteen years from now. That will never get built. We've got to keep our project separate from that. If they say, pay us so many dollars or something, that's all right. But --

MR. CAL MARKERT: But Daphne's folks --

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: What impact this will have on that is just --

MR. CAL MARKERT: Right.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: -- insignificant. They're trying to throw a lasso around us --

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: Right.

MR. MICHAEL THOMPSON: And get us in --

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: -- and drag us into the project .

COMMISSIONER DAVID BISHOP: Well, what's the best way for us to approach it, to not get lassoed into it?

MR. CAL MARKERT: If the Corps will let us, when we're doing our mitigation report, you know, I -- we could fund one of Daphne's projects and be done with it in a sense. Daphne just needs money. They said they're working on plans. And that girl said, that'd be fine. We can be responsible for it. We're going to have the maintenance plan over the -- after it's finished. But, right now, we're not doing anything because we don't have the money. And they're looking at about a hundred thousand dollars to do the next section of the creek. But I -- I really don't know. Hopefully in about two weeks, I'll know what the Corps says about that.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: And -- and, Mr. Chairman, I -- I would hope you'd come up with a plan and submit it to the Corps. They'll mess around with you from now until doomsday, until they get it right. And then they still will worry about a lawsuit. And -- and, you know, they just won't ever do anything. We've dealt with that. Anyway, I'm sorry.

MR. CAL MARKERT: We have.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: It's on the record.

MR. CAL MARKERT: We've sent a plan. And we -- we think these two bridges are going to be okay. We're filling some wetlands and not bridging the whole thing. And we thought they were going to come back and say bridge the whole thing. But they haven't. They're really focused on this. So we're -- They said -- We're waiting on them to send us an official letter. As soon as we get that, we've got our report ready on how to do this and mitigate it. We're -- we'll be ready to turn that back into them and go from there.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: Okay.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: So we're not going to let the contract like we though we was going to do?

MR. CAL MARKERT: No, sir. Not in September. There's no way.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: We knew we wasn't going to do it September, but now it may be next September.

MR. CAL MARKERT: It could be. But it'd probably be four to six months.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: Well, if we keep fooling with that and we get involved in that, it'd be four to six years.

COMMISSIONER CHARLES "SKIP" GRUBER: Is the State coming along with their part of it yet? Have they finished theirs?

MR. CAL MARKERT: They're -- they're about finished with the plans. That's the other part of the issue. When State did an environmental document for the interchange, we said we want a service road. They had to change the style of interchange and changed the environmental documents. So they said, well, you pay to have the environment document revised, being it's a different kind of interchange, with a service road. And we did that. They finished their plans. The environment document was approved. They were supposed to advertise that approved environmental document for thirty days, get comments, and then write what's called a FONSI.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: Right.

MR. CAL MARKERT: Well, they didn't and they didn't and they didn't. And finally I talked them into letting us advertise it. And should be -- Right now, we should be towards the last day of getting comments. And we're going to send the FONSI in. As soon as that's done, they can start buying right-of-way on the interchange. But that's held up -- that's been a three- or four-month delay.

COMMISSIONER CHARLES "SKIP" GRUBER: But that's not going to -- that's not going to affect that, what's going along up there with that other?

MR. CAL MARKERT: We have to -- We're pretty much -- Where I showed you that creek, to build -- We were going to build our project first. But when we build ours, our total slope is going to come over -- up under where their ramp will be. So we're permitting part, too. So they're -- they're okay right now. And, you know, we tried to get them to help us get our permit and tried to do a joint permit. And they said no. And so we didn't wait. We didn't -- We just took off and sent in our application.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: So you're really looking at -- at us doing our service road with or without that interchange.

MR. CAL MARKERT: Right.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: And I think that would be good. If we could -- if -- if there's some way we can keep that moving and not be dependent upon State and that interchange --

COMMISSIONER DAVID BISHOP: Yeah. Yeah.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: -- I think that would help all the commerce up there at both those --

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: Right.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: -- both those shopping centers, tying all -- all that together.

MR. CAL MARKERT: All right. Well, what I'll do is -- We're expecting a letter from the Corps any day that says -- that has comments about what we've submitted and what we want to do. I'll keep y'all posted on everything they want and everything we do. And -- and we'll all work together to get -- to get the Corps satisfied as fast as we can. And then we're -- then we know how long our bridges are. We can finish up and get to work. The agreements for the money need to -- I'm going to have to probably redo them, because they expire in December, from one of -- from, I believe, Timbercreek.

COMMISSIONER DAVID BISHOP: If you can get it back on the table before something gets out of kilter.

MR. CAL MARKERT: Right.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: Yeah. And they've about had enough of it, too. And, you know, we can just mess around with the -- I've said that -- with the Corps. But all we can do is submit something and let them deny it. That's what I say. Then if they deny it, they deny it. But --

MR. CAL MARKERT: And -- and that's what we've --

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: -- just messing around with them --

MR. CAL MARKERT: We've submitted something. And they've said they're going to deny, and they're going to tell us why they're denying it.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: Okay.

MR. CAL MARKERT: And I should be getting that in writing any day now.

COMMISSIONER FRANK BURT: Okay.

FINANCE CHAIRMAN WAYNE GRUENLOH: Okay.