New Animal Shelter Grant
I hope everyone had a great weekend. Lot's of events to kick off the Christmas season with the tree lighting in Crystal River on Friday, the parade on Saturday and Inverness doing a tree lighting at Liberty Park.
Christmas is coming. 17 days and counting.
Remember, tonight kicks off the first of the public workshops for the Comprehensive Plan. For everyone who says that they never have a chance to share their thought, this is that chance. Make sure you show up or at the very least take the survey and participate online.
Today, we are going to chat a bit about the animal shelter. Without much fanfare, there is a grant being given to the county to go towards the shelter. It is $800,000, so a very sizeable grant. Surprised we have not seen more about it.
Best of all, it is a no match grant. That means no money has to be spent by the county towards this. With many grants, the County has to contribute a portion of the funds. This one is pretty much FREE money. WooHoo.
But.... there is always a but.
This is earmarked for specific things.
Citrus will get the grant ONLY if they spend the money on one of those 3 things.
- Multipurpose room
- Sally Port
- Covered walkways
It is a little more complicated than that. While those things are able to be built, they are part of "Alternates" to the shelter. The bid documents ask the bidders to put prices on various things. Basically, the base shelter building and the three alternate options. Each of these options would be in addition to the base build.
The idea with this was to make it scalable. If the BOCC did not want to commit to the full facility, they could do the base build and future boards could do the alternate options as they desired.
Here are the alternate options
I reached out to Eric Head to confirm how this grant will work. The $800k can be used towards each on of those options, but each one would have to be built in full.
For instance, a sally port is one of the things the grant will cover, but that is part of Alternate 1. If the BOCC decides to go that route, the paper storage, mechanical room and dry storage would also need to be built. The reason is in the layout. Each alternate is its own build.
You can see that here.
The green area is Alternate 1. You can see part of Alternate 3 here was well (red).
This gives you an overall view of what these look like.
Alternate 1 (Green), Alternate 2 (Blue) and Alternate 3 (Red) are visible here. These are NOT part of the base build.
So the county gets $800k to use on one of those options. Well how much are they? That is the thing. No one really knows. Here are the estimates from the 2023 presentation.
If the bids come in at those numbers, the grant will pay for most of the cost for each alternate, if not all of it.
Dr Massullo has pledged $500k towards the education program center, so I would imagine the grant funds would be used elsewhere... or towards that and one of the other options.
I am told staff will work with the grant administrator to make sure that we can maximize it and get all $800k, assuming the BOCC chooses to do the alternatives. And that is the problem here. It relies on the BOCC to make the choice to do the alternative options. That is far from guaranteed.
It will all come down to the overall cost of the build and the alternative options. Back in 2023, it was projected to be around $15 million overall. The county has around $3.5 million in donations set to go towards the shelter costs, not including this grant or the Massullo donation.
The BOCC has gone on record that they want to keep this shelter as close to $12 million as possible. The county does not have funds to build this, so they will be bonding it. They do not want to exceed $12 million or so in bonding.
They need to keep in mind that they will have to choose one of the Alternate options to take advantage of this grant opportunity.
If the bids come in close to the projections, we should be able to get most of the facility built in one shot as the donated funds and grants will keep it around the $12 million number the BOCC is aiming for. If costs skyrocket, who knows.
I know of one commissioner who is likely out no matter the cost. I know of another who is likely out if this creeps over $12-15 million. I know a third who said they were out if it gets to be around $20 million. The other two seem to be on board to get this done, no matter the cost... although a crazy number will back them off of that stance.
I am no contractor, but I would not be shocked to see a price in the $15-20 million on the low end for the base shelter. Hopefully I am wrong, but a lot has changed since 2023 in regards to materials costs. A trip to Home Depot will tell you that.
Eeek.
Hopefully this comes back close to the 2023 projections. We shall see. Bids are due January 13th and BOCC presentation in February.
The community supports this shelter. A few weeks ago I launched a poll to see what the thoughts were in the community. It is not scientific my any means, but gives an idea.
231 people took the survey.
203 said they support the shelter being built for $12 million.
157 said they support it at $15 million
132 said they would support it at $20 million
115 said they would support it at $25 million
Perhaps more importantly, 197 people said they donate if there were a fundraising effort to help offset more of the costs.
I imagine that number is much bigger county wide.
I would be curious to see what a fundraising effort would look like today. A group raised over $400k for Pirates Cove in a little over 3 weeks. What could a push for further shelter donations look like? There was one several years ago that got much of the $3.5 million that is there today (it was over $4 million total, but money has been spent on plans, design, etc).
But this time... maybe make the funds contingent on the BOCC making the decision in February. No shelter, no donations. Don't let them sit on those donations another 20 years.
Come out Tuesday and let them know your thoughts!