Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Houghton County Jail Committee member Faith Morrison, who chaired the committee’s Tuesday meeting, said the committee has made progress in moving the county jail issue forward.

HOUGHTON – At a special meeting of the Houghton County Board of Commissioners on Thursday, Houghton County Jail Committee member Faith Morrison provided an update on progress made by the Jail Committee at its meeting on Tuesday.

Morrison said the meeting lasted two and a half hours and covered several topics to ultimately present to the Board, including a proposed event to publicly discuss the jail project with local contractors, adding the Jail Committee is struggling, because the members are not familiar with the design-build process.

“One of our members, Justin LaCosse, suggested that something like an Industry Day would allow an informal meeting with contractors that choose to join us – not select contractors, but openly invite folks who are joining this Industry Day in an open way, open to the public, discuss the project, explain the process of the design-build to a point where we could understand how that could be moved forward in the county,” Morrison said.

LaCosse said what could result from an Industry Day would be a ROM (rough order estimate) and an exchange of views on the project and how it could be structured with the contractors. The ROMs that come from the Industry Day exercise could lead to discussions of where the costs were and thereby the project could be modified to save cost while achieving the county’s goals.

ROM, or Rough Order of Magnitude, is a preliminary, high-level estimate used to approximate the cost, time, or resources of a project when specific details are still not known.

Board Chairman and Jail Committee member Tom Tikkanen said the Board is pleased with the interest expressed by local contractors and development firms in assisting the county in delivering the best product at a more reasonable cost than what was estimated last year.

At the Tuesday committee meeting, Tikkanen said he had been contacted via email by Dan Leveque, the president emeritus of Gundlach Champion, about their interest in the jail construction job. Tikkanen said he invited Gundlach Champion to send a representative to the Jail Committee meeting, but due to a time conflict, no one was present.

Morrison said with the direction of the Board, the committee would attempt to organize the Industry Day for sometime around the middle of July. The reason for the rush, she said, is because if the intent of the county is have a millage request on the November ballot, the Board needs time to determine its language. The proposed millage language will explicitly detail the specific facilities and serves a “yes” vote would fund, such as juvenile and mental health holding spaces, to counter public skepticism.

“Whatever the millage language will have to be worked on quite a bit by the Board,” she said, “to figure out how they want to express such a millage ask in the absence of schematics in the project.”

At its Tuesday meeting, the committee also discussed ballot language to express to members of the public who have been skeptics as to what voters would receive from “yes” vote.

Tikkanen expressed that there will always be those who are opposed to the jail project, and there was agreement on this. The committee members agreed that some public opposition to a new jail is inevitable. They focused on how to explain to voters the benefits a new jail would provide and considered a list of features and improvements that could be included in the project. The committee viewed this as important groundwork for developing ballot language and public messaging.