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Show Statements Given on New Construction Statements suggesting that now is not a good time to construct the proposed new County Office Building were challenged todav bv several building authorities, including in-cluding the Provo City Engineer and the executive vice president of the Utah Valley Home Builders Association. "Construction bids are coming in very competitively right now," said Jack Zirbes, Provo City Engineer. "On the last job we let for bid, eight of the nine bids that came in were under our estimate, some by tens of thousands of dollars. The new building will never cost the citizens less than it will right now: materials are down, contractors are hungry, and interest rates are dropping, the voters will be passing up a real opportunity op-portunity to save money on a badly needed facility if they vote against the bond issue." Robert Wagner, Executive Vice-president Vice-president of the Utah Valley home builders Association, agreed and warned that building costs will skyrocket as soon as the economy shows significant improvement. "I look for a 30 percent increase, at least, in labor and materials. My information in-formation comes from working professional pro-fessional contractors and suppliers, as well as from our national organization which is well informed about such matters." Mr. Wagner said that the need for the building is obvious, that he strongly favors it, and that " we should do the prudent thing, we should act to meet this need before the next round of inflationary increases." in-creases." Glen T. Nelson, a retired BYU Professor of Economics, said that lumber prices are at 1976 levels, some mills have shut down and that the economy isn't likely to register any major improvement in the months mon-ths ahead. A source close to LDS Church " building programs gave this assessment: assess-ment: "It's the best climate for bid letting that we've had for several years. General contractors are extremely ex-tremely competitive right now, some are. even coming after us." He added that even though contractors are hungry, the inflationary spiral in construction will continue for at least another year." All the more reason to undertake needed projects now." Sam Brewster, chairman of the citizens advisory commission that studied Utah County building needs, said that inflation adds about $67,000 each month to the cost of the building. "This is the reason for holding the special bond election on June 3 rather that waiting until the primary election on September 9, to avoid an estimated inflationary increase in-crease of over $200,000 between June and September." Mr. Brewster said that a 1.1 mil levy would amortize the project over 20 years at a cost of about $8.30 a year to the average homeowner. |