With total costs for Flathead County’s South Campus Building coming in over budget, county officials are looking at options to keep the project on track.

Bids for the construction ranged from $5.95 million to $6.4 million, but figuring in architectural and permit fees will bump up the total cost to about $7 million, county Administrator Mike Pence said. The county has budgeted $6 million for the new building.

The county commissioners are scheduled to award the winning bid at 10:15 a.m. Monday, although that meeting potentially could be delayed until Tuesday or Wednesday to give the county more time to work out a funding scenario, Pence said.

The commissioners have been working toward awarding the bid by the end of the year. In January, newly elected commissioner Phil Mitchell replaces Cal Scott, who has been heavily involved in the process of developing better accommodations for the Agency on Aging.

The South Campus Building will house the Agency on Aging, Health Department services such as the dental clinic and space for the Maintenance Department.

The Agency on Aging has outgrown a facility the county has leased for more than 10 years and the commissioners have been considering relocation options for several years.

Bids from four construction companies included costs for food-service equipment, but that portion of the project will be funded with money the Agency on Aging has set aside.

Of the $6 million previously earmarked for the building, the Health Department will chip in $1.5 million. The remaining $4.5 million will come from Flathead County’s payment-in-lieu-of-taxes, a federal appropriation that compensates counties for lost tax revenue from public lands.

Pence and Commissioner Gary Krueger were among the county officials who met with the county Finance Department on Christmas Eve to mull funding options in anticipation of a $7 million price tag.

“We’ve got $2.5 million in other projects that aren’t scheduled for a time, the jail [improvements] and gymnasium,” Krueger said. “I don’t really want to mess with that, but the money is in the bank. We have that money to be able to pay for the [South Campus] project.”

Pence said he believes it would be preferable to use payment-in-lieu funds to pay for both the South Campus Building and a renovation of the old jail building. Keeping both projects on track may mean delaying one of the projects by six months to a year.

The county anticipates getting its next payment-in-lieu allocation of $2.25 million in June 2015 for fiscal year 2016.

“For PILT, we can’t say what will happen in [Washington] D.C., but one of the things that’s supposed to happen is they will do the budget on the federal level in a more timely fashion,” Pence said. “We’re hoping the PILT decision will be made earlier.”

Krueger agreed that if payment-in-lieu-of-taxes funding comes through for fiscal year 2016, it’s preferable to use that money for the additional costs of the South Campus Building instead of tapping into scheduled capital improvement funding for other county projects.

Bidders for the South Campus Building include Swank Enterprises of Kalispell and three Great Falls firms: Sletten Construction, Oswood Construction and Dick Anderson Construction.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.