City of Jackson must find additional $320,000 to remove “missed” asbestos.
For a while now, the City of Jackson has planned to tear down the old Consumer’s Energy building downtown, but a quarter-of-a-million-dollar mistake is causing some setbacks.
About nine months ago the city hired a firm to assess how much asbestos is in the old Consumer’s building. Based on that, bids came in for the removal project. Officials found a company that agreed to do it for just under a million dollars, and the work began.
“When the contractor got inside the building and began to take a look at some of these things, they found all types of additional asbestos. Maybe another 40 percent more. So we were not off by a little bit,” said Larry Shaffer, Jackson City Manager.
The original estimate was off by so much the city will now have to pay around $320,000 more dollars to get rid of all the asbestos.
“I’m disappointed. We’re not asbestos experts here in this building. So we have to go out and contract for professional services and we expect those professional services to be done in a professional fashion,” said Shaffer.
City Manager Larry Shaffer says he won’t speculate whether or not this was intentional. He says the city is just sticking to the facts.
“We know this, the original assessment was deficient. Should other people have known about that? Maybe. Did they know about that? I don’t know,” said Shaffer, “We’ve gotta move on and figure out how to get this problem taken care of.”
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