Commissioner William Zagorski used a precinct projects item Monday to press AG3 and county staff for more detail about invoices and the construction timeline on a county barn project and to question recurring cloud-hosting costs for the county’s GIS application.

Zagorski said about $101,000 has been spent on the barn project to date, with roughly $67,000 more in outstanding bills and that the contractor’s invoices were categorized simply as “administrative services,” which he said made it difficult to explain payments to auditors. He asked AG3 for a more detailed, itemized breakout of what the county is being billed for. “When I go to the grocery store, I get an itemized saying what I bought. And when you say admin services, I don't know what that is,” Zagorski said.

AG3 and county staff responses
An AG3 representative said the project was structured as design-build and that invoices reflect surveying, architectural and engineering work and administration tied to bid coordination and construction management. AG3 offered to provide a more detailed, “veiled itemized” breakout of charges and noted some project scope changes increased the estimated construction cost. AG3 also said the project has permitted plans and can be put back out to bid if the court wants to pursue new bids or reduce scope.

Zagorski also raised a separate contract with AG3 for a county GIS application. He said the county has been paying $3,000–$4,000 per month for cloud hosting and asked why the county did not host the data on county servers. County IT and GIS staff said the system is Esri-based and that a transition from cloud hosting to local servers is feasible if the court authorizes transfer, and they proposed a follow-up meeting and a progress report in about a month to outline migration steps and a cost estimate.

Why it matters: Zagorski said unresolved billing descriptions and rising construction estimates create audit and budget risks at the precinct level; GIS hosting costs have an ongoing budgetary impact if the county continues to pay third-party hosting fees.

Next steps
AG3 offered to meet with commissioners and staff in follow-up discussions. County GIS and IT staff agreed to prepare a migration plan and a timeline and to report back to the court with a transition estimate and schedule for bringing precinct data onto county-managed servers.

Ending
Zagorski said he would place the larger grant project connected to AG3 on a future agenda; commissioners and staff agreed to coordinate a meeting to reconcile invoices and plan the GIS migration.