GREEN COVE SPRINGS – A gun range expected before the end of the year has slipped into 2022, and it’s unclear if it will be usable by the public as previously stated.

The Board of County Commissioners and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office have been working together for years to bring a gun range to the county. It would allow CCSO deputies to complete mandated Florida Department of Law Enforcement training. It would also lower internal CCSO costs since they no longer have to spend time and money at other ranges.

Initial bidding was recently presented to the county and the gun range comes in with a $3.5 million cost, which was the lowest bid the county’s operation received. Forty-two contractors received notice to bid and five returned bids. While this cost would accomplish everything the BCC and CCSO want, it’s a price the county doesn’t seem to be willing to pay, so the project has been tabled to give everyone time to come back with new ideas.

“I want our sheriff department to have a range that’s useful for them to train on and qualify on,” Commissioner Betsy Condon said. “If we could build a range like Gateway College for $1 million...we should. This is a $3.5 million build but nobody has come back and said there is $2.5 million worth of public use in this range.”

The Gateway College gun range is one of the newer ranges in the First Coast area that works for public safety training and criminal justice qualification. The county is wrestling with why its range will cost $2.5 million more than at Gateway College, although they are comparable. Condon said the bigger problem is finding a way to earn revenue at the range.

Sheriff Michelle Cook said CCSO likely won’t be able to earn any money from the range.

“Typically, the ranges in the [counties with ranges] support the officers in that county,” Cook said. “There’s not really revenue to be made. The only revenue I’ve seen generated from a police gun range is when you have specialty groups come in like XYZ-SWAT training. They’ll pay a fee to use the range...but typically, in my experience, law enforcement agencies don’t typically charge other law enforcement agencies for use of range space because they’re all unfunded mandates that we have and we just support each other.”

Cook said she expects the school board, Green Cove Springs and Orange Park police departments and local State Troopers to use the range when it’s built. She also said there are about 650 officers in the county now who could use the range for qualified training. Clay also would be responsible to open the range to other agencies who want to use it for free.

The BCC, however, voted in previous meetings to bid out a dual-use range that could be used by both police officers and the public. The goal was to make it dual-use because it would be built with taxpayer dollars. The BCC rejected a motion recently to build a single-use range and instead voted to table the discussion for a later time.

A public-use range would require restrooms, ADA compliance and a full parking lot, among other things. The BCC learned last week if the range was private to just police, it would require all of this as well. The county says cutting the public-use part of the range wouldn’t really lower the costs, so now the county must determine other ways to cut costs.

All Cook and her office needs is a 50-yard range with 30 shooting stations, she said. A gun range of that size would likely be used mostly by the police, with little time left over for public use. It would get the range closer to the desired cost though. A larger gun range with more yardage and more shooting stations would open it up for more public use but the costs rise.

“The public isn’t going to pay a huge price to shoot, so where are we getting $2.5 million of revenue to pay for this,” Condon asked. “Our sheriff said she needed a basic range to meet FDLE requirements. This [$3.5 million] range is more than that and it’s a ‘nice to have.’ Things changed, though, when our sheriff said we need an expansion of our jail and it’s coming way faster than anticipated.”

“We need to figure out how to best utilize the money we have and meet the needs of our law enforcement. They need to have the most training they can have so that they’re protected. We can do that for $1 million. We know that because the [Gateway College] range did it.”