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Construction delays spur Milton to rework plans for new fire station By CHAMIAN CRUZ chamian@appenmedia.com MILTON, Ga. — With supply-chain delays brought on by the pandemic, Milton Community Development Director Bob Buscemi says the city has begun making progress on replacing Fire Station 42 on Thompson Road. Rising construction costs and other supply chain issues upended the project in 2021. The 3,800-square-foot facility was built in the 1970s, but discussions to replace it began nearly 20 years later. Milton took over Fire Station 42 from Fulton County after its incorporation in 2006. After it was demolished in February 2021, the city promised a “bigger, better, more Miltonesque” fire station by year’s end. However, the city received four bids in August that were significantly higher than expected, ranging from $4.65 million to $5.28 million. Initial cost estimates for a new one-story station, almost twice the size as the original, came in at just over $3.7 million. Plans called for a two-bay drive-thru with parking lot, lighting, landscaping, retaining walls and other site work, according to Communications Director Greg Botelho. “This happened in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly drove up costs for construction materials [and], in turn, significantly drove up the expected bids,” Botelho
By SYDNEY DANGREMOND sydney@appenmedia.com
CHAMIAN CRUZ/APPEN MEDIA
Milton Fire Station 42 will be rebuilt on the same site it stood for more than 40 years on Thompson Road. Milton Community Development Director Bob Buscemi says rising construction costs and other supply chain issues upended the project in 2021. said. Buscemi told the Herald in December that rather than moving forward with the project, staff chose to “value engineer” to find ways to reduce the overall cost without diminishing the quality and efficacy of the new fire
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station. The weeks-long process, Botelho said, touched on everything from wall paint to carpeting to fixtures. On Dec. 20, the City Council unanimously approved a change order with Kennesaw-based CROFT and Associates to amend their agreement to
See STATION, Page 5 OPINION
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FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — The new year has seen an exponential boom in COVID-19 cases, positivity rates and hospitalizations throughout Fulton County. At their meeting Jan. 5, county commissioners received the latest data from the Georgia Department of Public Health and laid plans to increase access to testing. “The seven-day averages for cases, hospitalizations and percent positives as of today are all at record highs for Fulton County,” Doug Schuster, Fulton County planning section chief said. “Ninety-two percent of all new cases are from the omicron variant.” Schuster also provided data demonstrating increases recorded since the last BOC meeting Dec. 15. “County hospitalizations have increased 667% since the last BOC meeting and pediatric COVID admissions are up 771% since the last BOC meeting,” Schuster said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established benchmarks for measuring transmission levels of the COVID-19 virus
See COVID-19, Page 14