Published: October 27, 2009 10:07 am      

County OKs new courthouse furnishings

Pittsburg County Commissioners authorized payment Monday of hundreds of thousands of dollars for work done on voter-approved projects and chose a state corrections industry agency to purchase furnishings to outfit the refurbished Pittsburg County Courthouse.

Those actions came in the commissioners' role as trustees of the Pittsburg County Economic Development Authority, at the authority's weekly meeting.

Payments were for work done on the Pittsburg County Justice Center and the Pittsburg County Courthouse expansion and renovation project.

A payment of $336,636 was approved for Atlas General Contractors LLC and Dolese Bros. Co. for work on the courthouse project. The same companies were paid $17,734 for work done on the county jail project.

A payment of more than $8,000 was made to BizTel Communications for work at the courthouse project.

After a presentation from Pittsburg County Assessor Jim Kelley, commissioners approved hiring IKON to do scanning work for field cards and assessment records that Kelley's office has.

Two companies submitted bids and Kelley said he calculated the cost of each of them based on projections of the number of records his office would need scanned and saved in electronic form.

Kelley figured there would be about 226,000 and he said IKON would charge $16,950 — about one-third of the $50,330 bid from the other company.

Commissioners approved using Oklahoma Correctional Industries — an agency which is on the state's approved vendor list — to purchase furnishings for the courthouse.

Commissioners figure they can save about $300,000 dollars using the corrections company. That means outfitting the buildings will cost between $425,000 and $450,000.

John Yates is the news director for McAlester Radio.