Despite a much larger price tag than anticipated, the drive to build a forensic crime lab for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office continues.
The Jefferson County Council voted unanimously May 22 to spend $4 million to help pay for construction costs for the lab to be built in Pevely. Those funds will come from the money the county was allotted through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) stimulus plan
According to preliminary estimates, county officials thought it would cost about $4 million to build the lab and another $1.5 million to equip it.
“We’re now being told it might cost $10.4 million to build and furnish it,” said Lt. Col. Tim Whitney, the undersheriff.
During the design phase, which is ongoing, the proposed building has gotten larger.
“We’re now looking at a building that’s a little more than 11,000 square feet,” Whitney said, which is 1,000 to 2,000 square feet larger than originally conceived.
“I guess construction costs and costs of materials have gone up,” Whitney said, “but that $4 million was always a very preliminary number. We knew that it was most probably going to be more.”
County Executive Dennis Gannon said $4 million represented the amount county officials believed they could allocate under ARPA guidelines.
“I never thought for a minute that we could build it for that ($4 million),” he said. “I didn’t know where it would end up, but now we’ve got a better idea.”
Gannon said officials are figuring out where the rest of the money might come from.
“We’re working on it right now,” he said, adding that the federal government has changed its rules concerning ARPA money, and that those changes might free up more money for the crime lab. “We’re hopeful.”
Whitney said the design firm, Hastings and Chivetta Architects in St. Louis County, is still working on plans for the building.
“We think we’ll have plans ready by mid-July,” Whitney said. “All of that has to be done, of course, before we can think about construction. We’ll know a lot more then, but we at the Sheriff’s Office are excited that this continues to move forward. It’s encouraging to know that people from the county are working to get this done.”
In March, the County Council approved spending up to $690,000 for design work for the lab.
In his State of the County address in February, Gannon said one of his goals was to see ground broken for a crime lab this year, but now said he’s not sure that will happen.
“I’m hoping something definitive concerning the lab will happen by the end of the year,” Gannon said.
“The important thing is that we’re continuing to move forward,” Whitney said.
The lab, which will process evidence associated with crimes, is to be built on Mason Circle North in Pevely, next to an existing evidence storage facility.
“The two buildings will be attached,” Whitney said.
The lab will include areas for processing DNA evidence, vehicles, fingerprints, firearms and drug tests. A separate area would be devoted to computer crime investigations.
St. Charles County, St. Louis County and St. Louis operate similar crime labs.
Sheriff Dave Marshak has said the crime lab is needed because his office now sends evidence to the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s lab in Jefferson City. That lab, which processes evidence from county and city law enforcement agencies around the state, can sometimes take up to a year to turn results around.