FAIRMONT– Many years of meetings and planning for a new Justice Center came to an end during a special Martin County Commissioner meeting on Tuesday as the board in a 4-1 vote passed a motion to not send the project out for bid, disband the core committee and stop work with all contractors.

Jonathan Loose of Wold Architects and Engineers– a firm that’s been working on the project with the board since about 2006 and Loose himself since 2017– opened the meeting and said, “After years of work we’re excited to be at the point to say that this project is ready to go out for bid.”

He and Todd Wetzel of ICS, the construction management firm that’s long been on the project, spoke about where they were at. Wetzel said that the construction estimate was coming in at $46 million with the overall project cost still estimated at about $54 million.

Wetzel also went over the tentative project schedule that had the county going out for bids for the project on April 10– about two weeks away– and resulting in a September construction start date.

Ultimately though, issues with a sign lease agreement and land purchase were the demise of the project.

At the Dec. 17, 2024 meeting, the board approved the option to purchase land– called the Siems Site– to construct the new Justice Center on.

At a Feb. 19, 2025 meeting, the board passed a motion to direct the county attorney to reach out to the current land owner to have new restrictions placed on the billboard contracts for the companies that restricts political ads including social issues and bail bonds and that if County Attorney Taylor McGowan were invited to draft the agreement from the land owner, that he bill them for his time to draft such an agreement.

At the March 18 board meeting, some commissioners voiced serious concerns with how long long it took to meet requirements outlined in the contract.

On Tuesday Commissioner Joe Loughmiller made a motion to approve the copy restriction addendum to the sign lease agreement, which Bleess seconded.

Loughmiller said that he believed it would meet both the letter and the intent of what the original motion was. He recognized a 30 day window for the billboard company to correct any discrepancies, which he said was acceptable to him considering the fact that it was an out-of-state company.

Commissioner Kevin Kristenson said that he thought 30 days was too long and said the county is a public entity and that he thought other topics could be added to the addendum.

Commissioner Richard Koons agreed and claimed that a standard contract for billboards is 30 days and that he didn’t want advertisement on the land that would house the Justice Center.

There was some discussion about what else could be added and Koons pointed out that it could not be known what social issues would pop up 15 years from now, though Loughmiller said a future board could decide at the time.

“I am not a firm believer that a county property with a county justice center should have any billboards,” Koons said.

Commissioner Jaime Bleess suggested directing the county attorney to change the addendum to call for a 10 day window.

“That might be more palatable to the board. It makes more sense to me,” Bleess said.

Kristenson said he felt like 10 days was still too long to have something inappropriate up on a billboard considering it would be county property.

However, Koons said the sign was an encumbrance on a piece of property that the county was looking to purchase, which went against what was in the purchase agreement.

Bleess attempted to change the motion to call for 10 days but in a roll call vote on the original motion, it failed 4-1 with Loughmiller in favor.

Next the board considered the land purchase and Bless made a motion to approve of the purchase contingent upon changing the agreement with the billboard company to include a 10 day period to get something changed if something is posted outside of the purview of what’s posted in the original contract. Loughmiller seconded it.

Kristenson said he would have a hard time purchasing land that’s not free and clear of everything the board’s talked about.

Bleess said he had a concern with not handling the encumbrances in a proactive manner.

“The trickle down effect would be that we’re unable to purchase land to go out for bid on a project that’s on a schedule where there will be competitive bidding. We have north of $3 million of county taxpayer money tied up in the design processes that have led us here since 2017,” Bleess said.

He said he believed the board should see through the process to see what the bids would come in at.

“We’re at a point now where we know that this is pretty much the spot that works to have it in the county seat. It’s available and the designs were made for it,” Bleess said.

Loughmiller asked that the board table the motion until its April 1 meeting to see if anything can be amended in the meantime.

Loose had previously said that it was highly preferable for the county to own land before it went out for bid on the project. He said that if the land purchase is discussed and decided on at the April 1 meeting, it will still be a few days before the project is slated to go out for bid.

“If we shut this whole process down today, we’re immediately looking at deferred maintenance processes in the security building that include $10 million and I’m not sure that’s a path that we want to go down and if it is, I think we should spend some serious time individually as board members looking at what that looks like between now and April 1,” Bleess said.

Loughmiller said he was personally tired of kicking the can down the road.

In a roll call vote, the motion to table the land purchase failed 3-2 with Loughmiller and Bleess in favor.

As the motion to table failed, the board reverted back to an earlier motion and that motion failed 4-1 with Loughmiller in favor.

With that, the board moved on to agenda item 4.4– consider issuing project for bids. There was a lull in the transition as no one seemingly knew how to advance the conversation.

“If we’re not landowners when we go out for bid, we might still get some bids that are considered reasonable but logic would say that some construction companies would rather bid a project to people that own the property,” Bleess said.

He said he felt that it was important to move forward with the process to see how much the project would cost.

Bleess asked Wetzel if the board could issue the project for bid without being landowners and Wetzel said he’s never seen that done.

“What are they bidding if you decide not to purchase the land? We wasted our time putting it out to bid, we’ve wasted contractor’s time… there’s actual cost that goes into bidding a project,” Wetzel said.

Commissioner Billeye Rabbe made a motion to not send the project out to bid, disband the Justice Center core committee and have no further services with ICS, Wold and other vendors. Kristenson seconded the motion.

Kristenson said he’s heard from several constituents who say they cannot afford the county’s project and that it has recently hit home for him.

“The needs of our county are different than what we think as a group but I’m voting as my constituents want me to vote,” Kristenson said.

Loughmiller said the board would need to consider what’s next because there are building issues that need to be resolved.

“The sun is going to come up in the morning for Martin County and for all of us and at the end of the day we’re going to have a job to do going forward,” Loughmiller said.

However, he stressed that there is a substantial cost to out-of-county placement for inmates and to what needs to be done for deferred maintenance for the current facility and more.

“They won’t see it as a single line item. It will be scattered across various different budget categories… I am very comfortable in my estimate that over the next 30 years if this isn’t built, the cost is still there. It’s just in different categories,” Loughmiller said.

In a roll call vote, the motion passed 4-1 with Bleess opposed.