Buildings and Facilities Task Force

Monday, April 4, 2022 - 9:00 am

Steve McNally - Chairman

Chairman McNally called this task force to order at 9:00 am with the following in attendance: Clayton Barber, Derek Doty, Roy Holzer (9:05), Steve McNally, Ike Tyler, Mark Wright, Jim Dougan, Mike Mascarenas and Dan Palmer. Stephanie DeZalia and Noel Merrihew were absent.

Also present: Dina Garvey

News Media present - Tim Rowland - Sun Community News

MCNALLY: We’ll get this started, okay, Jimmy.

DOUGAN: Want to just start with the update like we have been?

The main complex, we did get the results back of the asbestos testing. There was no asbestos found. It did cost us about $1,300.00 to verify that, but there was no asbestos found. So, I should have a schedule back from the contractor very soon to get started on that bathroom.

Down at replace the stair treads, Social Services. New York State contract, the vendors are, the price of materials has changed so much that the vendors don’t seem to be holding the New York State contract prices, so Linda is looking in that for me. The way we’ve been doing all our flooring projects is we follow New York State contract and then we send it out to a couple of listed New York State contract vendors and they give us prices, but we’re hearing that they can’t do that right now, because the cost of the materials coming to them is so high. So, those things are basically ready to go get those prices, but we’d like it to be under State Contract, if we can get that worked out.

Windows for here, we’re still waiting for second floor air conditioning for DSS, which is one of these units out here. We’ve got just about all of our HVAC type projects, the materials done and specifications and that’s all been given to Purchasing for them to put out to bid, so that should go out to bid shortly and then some of the items we will be installing ourselves and some of them will be using our maintenance contracts for a few of the buildings.

Card reader/Entry door system; I think we’re getting close on those, it is still a face-in system, Dan or is it cards?

PALMER: No, it’s cards.

DOUGAN: It’s just a card. We’re getting close on that and we’re trying to have the same…

PALMER: They all came in.

DOUGAN: They did?

PALMER: Yeah, so we have them downstairs.

DOUGAN: Okay, so we will start to install those, we’re trying to use the same card to access the building, as you would as time, to do your time.

TYLER: So, everybody would have to do that?

PALMER: Everybody would eventually get a card.

DOUGAN: We started with this plan a few years ago, after Mike had a couple of threats and we needed to shut the building down fairly quickly. So, with this, you know, the right call goes in, the County Manager or the Deputy County Manager and myself, then we’ll just lock all buildings; okay?

TYLER: So, it won’t be locked all the time?

DOUGAN: That’s right.

PALMER: There will be a couple of doors, like right now, you could pretty much walk in to any door, anywheres. We’re going to have specific doors for the public to walk into.

DOUGAN: Yup, exactly

MASCARENAS: And it’s controlled by a system. The other nice thing about that is, you have cards to get in and that card is attached to a human being, so you know who’s here, who’s not. If people have to work late, they come in, their card is read that they were here at such and such a time, so if something were to happen you know what that is.

TYLER: Sure, oh yeah.

MASCARENAS: When people leave, retirement, terminated, those types of things, you shut their card off, so you don’t have keys hanging out there. It’s a lot better for a lot of reasons.

DOTY: Mike, separate network or tied right into a County system for recalling any of the information?

MASCARENAS: It’s a software program that operates through our network.

PALMER: It will reside on our server.

DOUGAN: It’s basically the same system that we have for the secured doors, the jail is a slightly different system at the Public Safety Building, then Social Services here. This is the same as Social Services.

MASCARENAS: I’ve been doing it for quite a while now, we’re just pushing it out to the rest of the County.

DOUGAN: Carpet and paint, same thing with New York State Contract with flooring.

Probation, the same thing with the technical specs for the equipment.

Courthouse roof; they mobilized last week. They worked over the week to remove the stone ballistic and other than there was court scheduled for this week, so we weren’t planning any work, but they of course settled late Friday, the court case.

TYLER: I was over there and heard the big squirrels on the roof walking around.

DOUGAN: Did you? That’s what we hired, big squirrels.

Replacing the fire alarm panel; that’s being done through our contractor AllTech and that is now, the contract amendment is with the County Attorney to do that.

The next few items for the courthouse are all being specified.

Public Health, it’s again, the contract for flooring, construct a handicapped assessable bathroom. We’ll start that after this one is moving forward.

I kind of gave you an update, last time, on the Public Safety Building on the HVAC that we’re finding that the cost to deal with the controls, because they’re all proprietary, was more than the unit. We are looking for some other options, right now for that and we’re going to have to deal with that long term. So, we may end up dealing with control system upgrade, even before we start doing the rooftop units. Nothing on the sewage pump station is in design. The mini-splits, again the technical specs are with Purchasing. Carpet at State Police and the Sheriff is the same.

Mental Health; we have ordered one of the two doors, because the cost of those doors are so high. So, we’ve at least ordered one and we’ll see how we are a little bit closer at the end of the year and I am waiting some details from the Mental Health Department on their remodel.

The roof at the Fish Hatchery is expected to actually start next week, toward the end of the week. The wells we’re designing to get a bid package out. The bathroom building should be complete by June, just wanting to get some outside, with some Buildings and Grounds staff. The slip lining of the concrete channels, that package will be to Purchasing, this week, so they can advertise it. FEMA, we’re still waiting on FEMA, but we’re close, we’re making some progress with them. SPEDES is ongoing.

Fairgrounds; painting Floral Hall, we received no bids, so we’re going out trying to find contractors that might be interested and then getting those names to Purchasing.

TYLER: Jim, they just rebid, they rebid out the Depot Theater and they got a bid, the same person that painted the town hall, the Westport Town Hall. I think they might be out of Chazy. So, I will get you that information.

DOUGAN: Okay, that would be very helpful, that would be great.

The water system and backflow preventer, you know, we’re going to specify that. Probably won’t replace it until after the Fair. We’re starting to get groups out there and things and we’ll probably wait, so we don’t have water down for a long period of time before the Fair.

Storm water; they did some investigation, actually found that the line that goes to the center of the track, that big structure that’s in the center of the track is in pretty good shape. So, I’m going to put an alternate in the Fish Hatchery bid for slip lining, that we talked about, to maybe slip line that while they’re here, just get an alternate price, see if we can afford that.

TYLER: That’s the way to go.

DOUGAN: Community Resources; those windows are here. The weather is on our side, so we’re getting closer.

The old jail; that’s my other handout, we’ll talk about that in a second.

DPW; you can see in the picture how we’re coming along there. Electrical Contractor has begun to install the electric and lights on the inside and then Soil and Water, they moved out of one half of the basement into the other half. I know the picture looks a little messy, but it’s actually working pretty well for them, I think and we, now that the weather is on our side we’ll start cutting in the other two windows, so they have some natural light and ventilation on the other side and hope to move them in to have the whole basement by the end of May.

The man-doors; we have the materials from last year that Buildings and Grounds will install soon, now the weather’s breaking and we are procuring this year’s upgrades.

The fuel system; we do have a quote from the Fuel Master to upgrade. We’re still reviewing that and going through it to make sure we can, it’s what we want, full trigger.

And as far as the Admin Building, we just kind of work on it when we have time. we haven’t had a lot of progress on it, but we do have the HVAC equipment is ready to be bid.

Any questions on any of those?

DOTY: Jim, can I ask you about Adirondack Concrete, have they worked for you quite often?

DOUGAN: Adirondack Concrete out of…

DOTY: The Olcott person.

DOUGAN: Yup, yup, Gary Olcott.

DOTY: I have a call into him right now, we got a problem with the chimney on the side of the town hall. The pointing in between the bricks is just deteriorating bad and he hasn’t gotten back to me. I’m sure he’s busy right now.

DOUGAN: We’ve been pleased with them. They’re a local contractor, they’re relatively small. You know, they’ve done quite a bit of bridge work for us.

DOTY: Yeah

DOUGAN: Along with this structure out here, a number of small bridges.

DOTY: There’s just a few people to go to for something like that.

MASCARENAS: Your salt shed; right?

DOUGAN: The salt shed, they did. They’ve been cost competitive. Partly because they’re a small firm, they stay away from our Federal-Aid projects, because there’s so much paperwork involved. I don’t know if they do that kind of masonry work or not, but I will be talking to them, unless my project manager will be.

DOTY: If you wouldn’t mind mentioning it.

DOUGAN: No problem.

DOTY: And I’ll stay on them, because it was my first awareness of his business, but he comes highly recommended.

DOUGAN: Gary is a heck of a worker.

DOTY: Good

DOUGAN: And he expects the same out of his other workers.

DOTY: The only other thing I would like to ask, is the well you mentioned at the Fish Hatchery, have you identified a vein to go or you’re just going to punch a hole in the ground?

DOUGAN: Yeah, quite a bit of investigation work has been done. We’re actually, as part of some upgrades that the Town of Crown Point is doing, they needed a little bit of Fish Hatchery land to put in a new septic system, because DOH is requiring them to put in a chlorine residual analyzer. So, I always give you the longwinded technical answer here, so in that we also got them to give us a little bit of property, near where, what they call the Fisk Spring, and we’ve identified that with a hydrogeologist, as a good spot. It might even be artesian flow and if it is artesian flow then we wouldn’t even, this first phase is to drop the well and so we might not even need to pump it.

DOTY: So, it sounds like it’s shallow.

DOUGAN: Nope, we’ll want to make sure that we, you know, we get it a couple hundred feet down, but we’ve got a lot of springs in the area and it’s a good aquifer, but you know, what we get at the Fish Hatchery is what’s kind of leftover, so, that’s why we’re putting a well in, mostly because all of our water there all ends up being surface water source to come to us. So, when we have a drought situation or when Crown Point has a break, we are the last ones to still have water.

DOTY: So, you’re going to put it in storage or you’re going to rely on recovery?

DOUGAN: No, I think if we put this in and we’re well below, I think we only want to use the well as a backup.

DOTY: Okay

DOUGAN: We generally have enough flow, all about a couple of months of the year that it gets problematic.

DOTY: Yup

DOUGAN: And we just want this, this is almost about that middle of the night when one of the intake pipes going into say, Putnam Creek, gets filled with ice or gets filled with debris we want to be able to track the flow at the head box, so it automatically kicks the well on.

DOTY: I got ya.

DOUGAN: Dan can tell you, I spend a lot of overtime, but it’s mostly just trying to keep the water open.

DOTY: No oxygen, no fish.

DOUGAN: No oxygen, no fresh water, no fish.

MASCARENAS: And temperatures matter.

DOUGAN: Yeah, and summertime temperatures matter.

MASCARENAS: Right, that surface water tends to get a little warm for trout, at times.

DOUGAN: And we can’t tie into, we can’t use Putnam Creek during the summer, because it’s too warm, it causes disease.

MASCARENAS: Jim, would that be, are you aware that the Town of Crown Point’s water source is located at that same location?

DOTY: No.

DOUGAN: Yeah, it is.

MASCARENAS: So, it complicates, right, so that’s why Jim’s talking about, as a backup and those types of things.

DOTY: So, it’s purely volume.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, it would likely be that same aquafer, right, Jim?

DOUGAN: Interesting enough, the Fisk Spring appears to be not tied to the same aquafer, which is interesting, because our springs, our big springs which is closer to Bradford Hill Road and I can show you all this on a map, are, you can see the correlation to when Crown Point’s pumps are on for a long period of time, you can see that flow drop. However, Fisk Spring, which is actually closer, there seems to be a geological feature that’s keeping them a little bit separate. So, we feel that we can take from Fisk Spring without effecting that. It’s just the way the glaciers went through there and the way they left stuff.

MASCARENAS: So, that’s even better news.

DOUGAN: It’s even better news, hopefully and hopefully it is artesian and we’ll probably put a, if we do end up with a well pump, we’ll have some kind of system on it to monitor the head box and then turn the pump on at a rate where as it only pumps what we need and we don’t go any more than that.

MCNALLY: Do you want to talk about the power?

DOUGAN: How do you like those pictures?

MCNALLY: Very nice, well done, very well done.

DOUGAN: What’s interesting is there’s actually, there’s two panels in the basement of Probation, which is the former Sheriff’s residence. There’s two panels there, one panel, basically runs the Probation Building, the other one runs the Old Jail, but you can see from these pictures all the different subpanels that have gone in. So, even the panel that runs the Old Jail, actually runs the Main Complex heating system. So, out of 42 circuits, 8 circuits in that Old Jail panel still run the Main Complex. So, I think it would be easy enough to isolate Probation with the one panel. We’ll isolate Probation and then if I were to jump right to what I think might be the right thing to do, I think the right thing to do, as part of this eventual teardown of the Old Jail, would be for me to run a new underground service over to the Treasurer’s basement here and make it a 200/400 amp service and then everything that’s in the Main Complex, electrically everything that’s in the Main Complex will be in the Main Complex, that will actually, we’ll leave both panels, the one that was in the Old Jail and the one that’s in Probation, there’s disconnects, as soon as it comes into Probation, so, I’ll just relocate there. We’ll have all the power you need at Probation, unless you decide that that building is something that you’re going to take, as well, but at least that’s my thoughts, is that we would do that. There doesn’t seem to be any power that goes to the Courthouse through this, although the fiber, there is fiber and I know you’re working on Twinstate.

PALMER: Twinstate’s down there now, actually.

DOUGAN: Are they? That’s great. It’s my understanding the fiber comes into the Courthouse, then crosses through into Probation and might skip the Old Jail; okay? And come into a conduit that goes from Probation into Treasurer’s. So, we might get lucky there, but there seems to be other fire alarm and data that is between those areas, as well. But, you know we were concentrating on power, we’ve still got to look at sewer and other things. But, I think in order to keep all the power running, I would propose to but in a new underground service from mail street, across the lawn to the Main Complex.

HOLZER: So, brand new, you mean, not trying to tie in? That makes sense.

DOUGAN: Brand new

HOLZER: That makes sense.

DOUGAN: I mean, I believe they’ve gone to all these other places, because power was so limited in this Main Complex when it was first built.

DOTY: Any new transformers needed out front?

PALMER: They replaced the transformer on Stewart’s side.

DOUGAN: They did, they replaced that transformer here. There is, you know, that part of the building right there and even this room that ran, that was an addition, that was, I don’t know the ‘90s, late ‘80s.

PALMER: Had to be before that.

DOUGAN: So, they did bring a new power service here that handles that side, pretty well.

DOTY: Okay

DOUGAN: We’ve got 3 phase out front.

DOTY: So, it’s still willing to break off with one leg?

DOUGAN: We’ve got 3 phase out front, so obviously we’ve got to talk to NYSEG, but I’m assuming they’re going to get it via a pull, not a transformer.

HOLZER: Power outage, what do we have for backup generators in this building?

DOUGAN: You have this one here, which generally covers the dak room, only, the dak server room only. That’s really all that you have here, okay? Then you have one for the Courthouse, that handles the Courthouse completely. So, the majority of the building is not covered. There maybe a couple of odd circuits that are tied into that and generator protected. So, you know, if you did bring in a new service, like that, over there, then I would say the same thing to do…

HOLZER: It would be something to take a look at.

DOUGAN: Put in an automatic transfer switch; okay? At least tie in through that now, or even a manual, a good manual and then have it setup. The time to do that is when you run a new service.

TYLER: Does the County own generators on wheels?

DOUGAN: We do.

TYLER: How many do we have?

DOUGAN: One, we have one.

TYLER: An old one?

DOUGAN: Yeah, it’s not real old, it’s not very new. I’m not sure the exact age of it. I do know that it’s a multi-tap, so that we can do 3 phase or single phase with it.

HOLZER: We’re not 3 phase running into here, are we?

DOUGAN: There’s 3 phase on the street.

HOLZER: But, not in the building?

DOUGAN: I don’t believe it’s in the building, at all. Not in this building, I believe we do have some 3 phase in the Courthouse, but not in this building. We’ve got lots of 3 phase up at the Public Safety Building and DPW. In fact, our lighting system in the Courthouse is all 277, most of it is 277, which is an odd voltage; which is making some our LED replacements a little bit difficult.

MCNALLY: So, is there a game plan on this, Jimmy?

DOUGAN: Well, I think the next, we’ll wait for what Twinstate has to say, now that we’ve pretty much got the snow off the ground and our guys are going to use the ground penetrating radar to kind of find anything else that’s out there. Similar to this building, right here, is, there’s dirt underneath these floors, it isn’t all basement. We’ve got the same thing between the Old Jail and the former sheriff’s residence, where Probation is now and we do know some of the sewer goes there. So, I honestly think to keep sewer from Probation going, I would probably simply install a tank off here to the side, let it run into that, pump it during construction and then after construction, tie it into everything that’s out back. It just seems like there’s only a handful of people there, probably, you know, a 1,000-gallon tank with what’s in there, it’s going to take them 2 weeks to fill it and you know we’re going to have construction for maybe 2 months, so 3 or 4 times to remove that is better than trying to maintain a line going through the middle of that construction process.

If you guys agree, I’ll start to reach out to NYSEG and see what it costs, what their fees for new service will be.

MASCARENAS: Jim, last month, I think it was, time goes so quick, you had your engineers here and they were speaking to the Public Safety Building.

DOUGAN: Yup

MASCARENAS: And some of the issues that we’re going to have to deal with.

DOUGAN: They were going to come back today, but because we had the Public Hearing at 9:30, and because we got this work done, I wanted to focus on this for everybody, but they’re going to be back again at our next meeting, next month with more detail and I apologize, I’m not sure whether they’ve chose the sewer system or they chose the HVAC and the controls for that. I think they chose the HVAC and controls to talk about, but they’re going to come with more detail.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, what I would like to do, the point I was getting at was, maybe some members of this group, take a tour.

DOUGAN: Absolutely

MASCARENAS: To see some of those things that we’re going to have to tackle in the coming years, because one thing you explained to me were like hot water tanks, it is almost like the building was built around it.

DOUGAN: Yeah

MASCARENAS: That they’re not even sure they could get them out, the size of them and those types of things. I think we need to see it.

MCNALLY: What building’s that?

MASCARENAS: Public Safety.

DOUGAN: We have a pressure reducing value that we tackled, just last week, ourselves. A pressure reducing value when it comes in has different ports on it, so you can manage that and the building has been having all kinds of water hammer issues and the pressure reducing value, when it was installed, is right tight to the wall, like this and all the ports to adjust are on the back side, because of the way the water service came in versus the direction they wanted to go, they just put it against the wall. So, Todd and Hugh and Jed, those guys actually re-piped the other day, so now we can get to those ports and we dealt with the water hammer. So, we can get into a long conversation on the construction management firm that oversaw some of this stuff, didn’t do you any favors.

TYLER: Isn’t that the end of the water line out there?

DOUGAN: It is the end of the line, so the only thing that comes down that hill after Betty Beaver’s, it’s the last spot.

TYLER: Okay

DOUGAN: So, yeah there’s some big water mains in there, too. So, the last thing you want is the water hammer to open one of those things up and the floor drain in the room was a 3” line, yet the service main is a 6”, so you tell me, if it did flood where the water’s going.

MCNALLY: Anything else?

DOUGAN: Sorry, I took up your whole meeting.

MCNALLY: It’s good, nice job on this.

MASCARENAS: Thanks Jim.

AS THERE WAS NO FURTHER BUSINESS TO COME BEFORE THIS BUILDING AND FACILITIES, IT WAS ADJOURNED AT 9:22 AM

Respectively Submitted,

Dina Garvey, Deputy Clerk

Board of Supervisors