This is the best you can do?
Posted by BrianThe city of Huntsville and Madison County have been cooperatively building a jail in Huntsville for… well it seems like forever. The jail was originally estimated to cost $25 million, but the project has been plagued with problems. Just last week the city council authorized another $32 million, which will bring the total expenditures for the project up to $70 million - nearly three times the original estimate. And there is no guarantee that the bill won’t go higher.
I’m not positive where all the funding is coming from, but the metro area has a population of about 370,000. That means that the cost of this money pit is almost $200 per person so far. The government could have used that money to placate the whiny school boards, mainly Madison County, and built two high schools.
During his “State of the County” address (who knew there was such a thing) Madison County Commission Chairman Mike Gillespie called the cost overruns “hiccups.” This project is suffering from heaving convulsions, not hiccups. Gillespie must have had his audience rolling in the floor, though, when he characterized the project as the best example of city-county government cooperation that he has seen in his 27 years as commission chairman. If this is the best they can do maybe they should avoid each other like the plague.
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November 4th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
[...] Commission chairman Mike Gillespie, who called the numerous problems with the project “hiccups,” said there are “legitimate concerns.” Dyer has even stated that it may be [...]