Lauderdale County supervisors are revisiting a list of alternates and additions as the $50 million government complex project comes in under budget.

The new complex will be located at the site of the former Village Fair Mall, and will house the Lauderdale County courts, the board of supervisors, county administration, tax assessor, tax collector, district attorney, public defender and other county employees. The project also includes extensive renovations to the former LabCorp building, which is being transformed into a new home for the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department.

In a work session Thursday, LPK Architects Construction Administrator Jim Smith told supervisors the project was coming in about $6 million under what the county expected to spend.

“When we did this think, at that time we took everything out of this building that we could to make sure that we were in the budget,” he said. “There are some things now now that we need to get back in this budget, and we’ve got the money to do it.”

Smith said the additions include cameras for the sheriff’s department and courthouse building, access control for the courthouse, an additional elevator, a parking screen for secure parking at the courthouse, additional site work, landscaping and support columns, a second public elevator and more.

County Administrator Chris Lafferty said some of the items considered were things the county was going to have to do anyway. Cameras at the sheriff’s department and cameras and access control for the courthouse were necessary security features that the county would have had to fund another way if the project wasn’t under budget.

“Several of those things we were going to have to do anyway,” he said. “Cameras, access control, signage and way finding, we were going to have to figure that out.”

Supervisor Jonathan Wells, who is on the project committee, said the committee previously discussed the list with Smith and tried to prioritize what was truly needed. Having $6 million may sound like a lot, he said, but the project still has a long way to go.

“The main thing guys is we prioritize,” he said. “Because $6 million sounds like a lot, but we’re still a year out and we didn’t want to say yes to everything happens. So we wanted to get what needed to be done in our our minds and highlight those and leave some cushion.”

Smith said he would work on preparing change orders for the board of supervisors to vote on. Some items are time sensitive and would need to be approved before construction got to a point where they could not be added.

However, Smith said, Wells was right, and leaving some money left as a contingency was a good idea.

“We’re a long way away from being through and a lot of things can happen between here and there,” he said. “So we don’t want to use all the money up right now.”