Buildings and Facilities Task Force

Monday, May 1, 2023 - 9:00 am

Steve McNally - Chairman

Chairman McNally called this task force to order at 9:00 am with the following in attendance: Robin DeLoria, Derek Doty, Shaun Gillilland, Roy Holzer, Steve McNally, Jim Monty, Matt Stanley, Ike Tyler, Mark Wright, Jim Dougan, and Mike Mascarenas. Noel Merrihew was absent.

Also present: Andrew Stanley, Dina Garvey, Anna Reynolds, Bill Johnston, Laurie Davis and Nancy Page.

MCNALLY: Alright, Jimmy, you don’t have a handout today?

DOUGAN: I do have one handout which is just handing this around, if people want that.

MCNALLY: Because of time constraints, if anybody has any questions Jimmy is always available.

MASCARENAS: These are just the ongoing work.

DOUGAN: Andrew, did have a presentation, but it looks like we’re having a little technical difficulties.

MCNALLY: What was the presentation on?

DOUGAN: It was on two things, the Ag and Youth Center where we stand with that and also with the demo of the old jail. I can walk you through things and if he happens to be able to solve the technical difficulties, great.

MCNALLY: A quick thing on the jail.

DOUGAN: You want the old jail, first?

MCNALLY: Yup

DOUGAN: So, the old jail. We had some meetings this month and visited some different sites. Mike and I met with the County Clerk, the District Attorney, Public Defender, Board of Elections to discuss everything that’s stored in the old jail and the pod, right now and start working on space where we could take some of that storage. So, we visited a few sites. There’s a building for sale, over here, next to community resources, the former St. Joe’s.

MASCARENAS: They’re still in it, ACAP owns it.

DOUGAN: So, we visited that with Mr. Monty, took a look at that building. we visited the basement of what building is it?

MONTY: It used to be the old Lewis school, it’s the town courthouse.

DOUGAN: We looked at the basement there. Mike visited our basement at DPW and we walked through the Public Safety Building and we toured the pod with them, looking for space of where we might move all the records and voting machines and the building up in Lewis had some nice space there. I think some others here should take a look at some potential for things at the Public Safety Building.

MASCARENAS: In terms of timeline and those kinds of things, for the voting machines, we have ordered the other voting machines that were approved by the Board. The new ones are slightly smaller, but not that much smaller. I would like those, at the very least, when they come back from the November election, our goal would be to utilize those new machines during the November election in terms of getting ahead of the presidential election that’s going to happen next year and not have a lot of chaos for the voters, to go to their new home, wherever that maybe.

TYLER: What happens to the old machines?

MASCARENAS: The old ones, right now, we did ask that question of Board of Elections and they’re trying to see if the company will purchase them back, because you can’t currently get parts of any of those. Some counties are still using those, they’re turning into end of life, so they may be useful in terms of being able to provide repair parts for machines, but stay tuned on that. They haven’t got an answer yet, back in that. So, that’s what we’re looking to do with them.

The space up in the Lewis facility, is actually, in terms of travels last week is probably the best space available. I do have an appointment set up with the County Clerk’s office to go review that space to see if it would work for records, minimally. In a perfect world I would love to have the voting machines wherever Elections ends up residing, whether it be temporary of long term. I just think that’s a better plan than having separate buildings for the voting machines than where they are located. Only because those machines do have to be plugged in periodically. They have battery backup in terms of that, so they have to be plugged so that battery is fully charged all the time. Easier to do that if you’re near them then in a separate space. I also think the confidentially and protection of those machines is critical and they need to be in an area that is secure and people have eyes on them at all times. It a big investment, the way elections are going, security of the elections is critical. I would, like I said in a perfect world I think that’s what we need to do. I would like to schedule a visit up to the Public Safety Building with a small group of us. I have met with the Sheriff, I have met with Emergency Services personnel, we’ve walked through that facility. We’ve looked at space up there, whether or not they can accommodate all of our needs is still yet to be determined, but I would like to ask that Steve, perhaps the Chairman and the maybe the Vice-Chairman come up with us and go through that building and see what’s potentially available.

MCNALLY: So, do we have a place to do their training? What would we do with the people for the elections that do the training in the pod?

MASCARENAS: Well, that’s just it, again, right now they’re doing the majority of their training up at the Public Safety Building, anyhow. It works out really well for them to do that training there.

MCNALLY: So, basically storage. If we can figure out the storage we should be good.

MASCARENAS: That’s right, on a side note I do have Jim pricing up another pod like structure. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything on that yet?

DOUGAN: I have spoken with the company out of Albany who is pricing it up. He’s going to give me an off the shelf, you know a typical unit that they have that would be that space and then he’s also giving me a price for something a little more custom based on exactly what we’re using it for. I expect that price in another 10 days, probably.

MCNALLY: Do you want to talk about the jail?

DOUGAN: The only other thing about the old jail would be that we do, Andrew has developed a bid for the asbestos abatement. We already have the survey done for the actual old jail area. The connection to the old jail and the sheriff’s residence when the Public Defender was previously, he’s getting a price from Atlantic testing to come and do the survey for that area. That area was never done. So, they’re on contract with us for asbestos and those kinds of things, so he’s getting a price on that. If it’s more than $5,000.00 I’ll be bringing it to the Board for review before we move forward.

MCNALLY: Are you working on the bid for removal of the building, also?

DOUGAN: Yeah, we’ll continue to work on that. We’re planning on relocating the utilities and those kinds of things first. The water relocation and putting a water valve in is already in a set of drawings that is with Purchasing right now for the two pump station projects that were already budgeted. We’ve included it with that. We feel that anybody that’s going to be on site with an excavator to put in those new manholes and do that work while they’re on site would do that little bit of water work, so hopefully that will progress.

MCNALLY: What’s your best case scenario for getting that jail out of there?

DOUGAN: It’s definitely going to be 2024. I’m hoping to actually have a bid for the old jail ready to be bid late this fall, so that somebody can come in and have most of next year to do it.

MASCARENAS: Steve, just so you know, the critical piece is really the pod this year, in terms of that and relocating those utilities and that would put us in a good position to get that jail down last year. That’s really our timeline.

MCNALLY: Perfect and anything else on facilities, besides Cornell Building?

DOUGAN: No, I think we’re ready to go to that.

MCNALLY: Okay, unfortunately, because of some, we’re going to have to do this in executive session, because there’s resumes involved with this on our scoring.

GILLILLAND: And it’s discussion of contracts.

MCNALLY: And it is a contract discussion.

THE TASK FORCE ENTERED EXECUTIVE SESSION AT 9:11 AM AND RECONVENED INTO REGULAR SESSION AT 9:30 AM.

MCNALLY: We’ve looked at our RFPs and would someone like to motion to hire AEDA for the engineering work at the Cornell Building.

RECOMMENDATION TO ACCEPT THE RPF FROM AEDA FOR ENGINEERING WORK AT THE CORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSION BUILDING.

Holzer, Monty

MCNALLY: All in favor? Opposed? Okay and we’ll bring it to the floor today.

PAGE: I just have a couple of questions? I want to know who the principals at AEDA?

DOUGAN: The principal owner?

PAGE: No, the principals who would be working on the project.

DOUGAN: The principal owner of the company is Andy Abdallah and then his son, Jim and then the principal architect for the firm, his name is Shane Chantelle.

PAGE: And so all three of them would be working on it?

DOUGAN: I’m sure, they also have other staff that will be doing things like mechanism design, structural engineering.

MCNALLY: Anything else for building? Great, thank you and thank you for all your work.

AS THERE WAS NO FURTHER BUSINESS TO COME BEFORE THIS BUILDING AND FACILITIES, IT WAS ADJOURNED AT 9:33 AM

Dina Garvey, Deputy Clerk

Board of Supervisors