Legislators: Emergency center construction to be funded

Area state legislators are optimistic that construction work on the Port of Morgan City’s Government Emergency Operations Center will be fully funded by Thursday, they said Monday.
State Sen. Bret Allain, R-Franklin, and state Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, announced at the Morgan City Harbor and Terminal District commission meeting that $5.9 million in Priority 2 funding for the Government Emergency Operations Center is on the agenda for the Thursday state bond commission meeting.
“We fully anticipate it to be fully funded,” Allain said. “That money should be available to you by the end of the year.” Priority 2 is for the actual funding of construction projects, Allain said.
The building will serve as a command center during emergencies and will also house governmental agencies on a daily basis. It will be located on La. 182 adjacent to the Morgan City Municipal Auditorium.
The governor and his administration ultimately get to pick which items will be funded first, Allain said. The administration selected the Port of Morgan City’s Emergency Operations Center as a project that will provide economic development and safety to the area, Allain said. The project is expected to be fully funded, which is a rarity with the limited amount of Priority 2 funding available this year, Allain said.
“It’s never a done deal, but I have never known something on the bond committee agenda that the governor supports not going through,” Allain said this morning. Jones was an integral part in securing the funding for the center, Allain said.
The amount is the largest of any allocation in this round of projects to go to the bond commission, Jones said. This facility will help the Morgan City area get the “swagger” back that it had in the 1940s through the 1970s, Jones said.
Jones referenced several other recent pieces of legislation that have helped the area including creating the Morgan City Development District, working to create more jobs at Intermoor and improving infrastructure at Cameron to allow it to expand along with getting funding for the new diving school at South Central Louisiana Technical College’s Young Memorial Campus, Jones said.
Allain also called the Port of West St. Mary an integral partner and said he was appreciative of how closely the two ports work together for the betterment of St. Mary Parish. “This whole area is really slated to boom in the next few years,” Allain said. With some additional dredging funds and other money, Allain sees great things for the parish, he said.
“It’s a $10 million emergency center that’ll take care of the needs of the Coast Guard, the sheriff, GOHSEP (Governor’s Office of Homeland Security), everybody,” Allain said. “So we’re really excited about having that in St. Mary Parish.”
Emergency Operations Center Project Manager Walter Adams said Allain and Jones did the equivalent of a last-minute home run by securing the funding. Acadiane Renovations in Franklin began mobilization Sept. 2 to prepare the site for construction, Adams said. All the clearing of land has been completed and a lot of drainage pipes are in the ground so work is slightly ahead of schedule, Adams said.
The first phase of work, which entails preparing the site for construction, is scheduled to be finished by Dec. 22, but Adams said it could be done a lot closer to Dec. 1. If the construction funding on Thursday’s state bond commission agenda is approved, officials could receive bids for that phase prior to Thanksgiving, Adams said.
At Monday’s meeting, the commission authorized port officials to advertise bids for the construction phase of the project once it is approved by the Louisiana Office of Facility Planning and Control.
The project budget is fixed at $9,866,667, of which $7.1 million is in a non-cash line of credit, $2,366,667 is in port matching funds, and $400,000 is in additional funding the port commission approved, he said. So far, $1,097,421.76 has been spent to date on the project, Adams said.
In other business, the commission:
—Accepted the Louisiana Compliance Questionnaire.
—Approved $53,405.38 for work by Acadiane Renovations at the Emergency Operations Center.
—Approved the port to provide up to $150,000 in funding for Morgan City’s wharf project.
—Approved a bid of $133,750 to construct a boat shed on the port’s property.