HILO — Dirt could start flying early next year for a new Kona building for the county prosecutor, three years after the County Council approved the project.
And it’s none too soon for Prosecutor Mitch Roth, who’s hoping the 16,000-square-foot, two-story building slated for the West Hawaii Civic Center will be ready by the time a new courthouse is built nearby.
Otherwise, he said, it’s going to be a 30-plus-minute drive each way in heavy traffic for his deputies, who will have to negotiate the drive from the current prosecutor’s site in Captain Cook every time they need to go to court.
“We’re very excited that the courthouse is moving forward and now we just have to have our offices moved closer,” Roth said.
The county earlier spent $1 million for the design phase of the project. A solicitation has gone out, with bids to be opened Dec. 7, Public Works Department spokesman Barett Otani said Wednesday. At that point, the county will know how much the project will cost.
Otani said the chosen contractor will get a notice to proceed by mid-January.
The County Council is also slated to vote on a $12.5 million general obligation bond to pay for the new building. Bill 83 is going straight to the County Council without committee review, because of the need to move quickly, Finance Director Deanna Sako said.
“Co-locating the prosecutor’s office with other county offices on the West Hawaii Civic Center campus will benefit the county with savings by using the economy of scale,” Mayor Harry Kim said in a Nov. 15 correspondence to the council. “Some examples of such savings would be in owning the building rather than renting, reduced travel mileage and time and using shared resources with other departments on the campus.”
Sako said the new bond issuance would bring the county’s debt service — the amount it spends annually on principal and interest — up to 13 percent of total expenditures. That’s within Government Finance Officers Association standards that debt service be below 15 percent of total expenditures.
Sako said the bond issue won’t significantly raise the debt service because annual payments, and sometimes refinancing at lower interest rates, have reduced the debt as new debt is added.
“It’s been hovering right around there for the last few years,” Sako said.
The new 140,000-square-foot courthouse, a state project, is scheduled to be complete in the middle of 2019 near the Makalapua Shopping Center. The $90 million project will give West Hawaii a three-story facility with five courtrooms, a law library, self-help center, conference rooms, holding cells, witness rooms, attorney interview rooms, and a grand jury meeting room.
The eight-building West Hawaii Civic Center complex, on 7 acres near the intersection of Ane Keohokalole Highway and Kealakahe Parkway, encompasses 22 county agencies plus a state agency in 85,000 square feet of space. Completed in 2011, it cost $50.5 million.