Tarrant County commissioners are spending more money to weigh options for a planned law enforcement training center.
Commissioners on Oct. 3 voted 4-1, with Commissioner Alisa Simmons dissenting, to amend a contract for a feasibility study on the center. The amendment is estimated to cost $120,798 for a total contract cost of $229,089.
The revised study, conducted by Fort Worth’s Komatsu Architecture, will provide the county with multiple location options for training sheriff’s deputies. Among the options are renovating the current training academy, using a blended approach with training activities at TCC’s Northwest Campus, or moving all training and operations to the TCC Northwest Campus.
Initially, the county’s plan was to construct a dedicated training center. The discussion around building a training center began in March when commissioners greenlit the Komatsu study to explore possibilities.
Komatsu needed more funds to explore how the county can keep the project within budget, Michael Amador, the county’s director of facilities management, said. County leaders put $11 million from its American Rescue Plan Act funds toward building a new training center.
Commissioner Manny Ramirez emphasized the importance of the revised study, highlighting that the first study came back with a higher price than initially expected.
“Once that price tag came back pretty high, the idea was that perhaps there’s some intergovernmental leveraging we can use to bring that price down,” said Ramirez.
The revised study should give commissioners a few options on how to do that.
The first is to renovate or expand the current training academy at the Tarrant County Resource Connection, including the construction of an indoor gun range. This option would retain training operations at the existing Sheriff’s Office center.
The second option is a blended approach with Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office training activities located at TCC’s Northwest Campus, while operations remain at the Resource Connection. This option also includes evaluating the construction of an additional indoor gun range at the Northwest Campus.
The third option would be to move all Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office training and operations to the TCC Northwest Campus, expanding the campus’s existing Law Enforcement Training Facility and the Police Firing Range buildings.
Simmons asked to table the issue until commissioners got a more exhaustive briefing on the amendment.
Nan Terry, a Fort Worth resident, also expressed reservations about the project’s expedition.
“I would encourage you to table it,” Terry told commissioners. “You’re spending $200,000-plus on a study, basically. If you spent that money on a plan, what it is that we need, what we could get at some other place, I think it would be money well spent.”
After Simmons raised concerns about the project’s timeline, Amador said the contract’s approval must be expedited because of the use of federal pandemic dollars.
Funds must be allocated by the end of 2024 and construction must be done by the end of 2026.
Matthew Sgroi is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Disclosure: Komatsu Architecture was founded by Albert S. Komatsu, father of Sylvia Komatsu, Chief Content Officer at KERA.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.