Cost of new town hall near original estimates

The Tinton Falls council's reaction to the so-called cost overruns for the new municipal building is interesting. Apparently people are surprised (some council members were shocked) that the project has "ballooned" to $9.6 million, a 7.6 percent increase over the GC bid.

This new number is curiously similar to the bids that were discarded by the town several years ago as being too expensive. It's now three years later and we're back near the original bid estimates.

Did everyone expect that we were going to get the same building today as originally estimated for less money? Did the town believe building costs were going to decline over the past three years? The town could have had a council member sit on the building committee instead of relying on secondhand reports about the project.

It's gratifying to see that council is showing good stewardship with taxpayer's money by scrutinizing the requests for extras. But let's stop the posturing and realize that eliminating items from the project deemed unnecessary in an effort to reduce costs, resulted in a scaled-back building that didn't contain the items needed to operate efficiently.

Perhaps the internal review process could have gone better, but blaming the engineer, architect or general contractor is like blaming the messenger.

Richard Unice

Tinton Falls