Old Stoney was built in 1892 and like most buildings with that sort of age on it, needed repairs to take care of problems such as heating and cooling parts have become obsolete and brand new equipment has to be used in order to maintain today’s buildings.
So, when a possible price tag of about $200,000 was brought up to mainly fix things such as the HVAC system at Monday night’s Frankfort City Council meeting, questions by the City Councilmen were raised looking for the answers.
“The big situation we’re facing right now is the front end controls,” said Frankfort Mayor Judy Sheets. “That’s for the whole building. It’s obsolete and needs to be replaced. In order to make that work you can tell today it’s not working but that is all because of that control system.”
Sheets said that needed part would cost $64,438 but it would be for the entire building, which she said would cover the major part of work that needs to be done.
“It’s not like we’re just sitting here and not fixing things when things are not working,” said Sheets. “When we have found a situation, we’ve had it fixed. We’ve had a maintenance person at Old Stoney on a daily basis if we needed anything.”
Sheets also said that over the past three years, they have spent $42,000 in heating and cooling repairs on keeping this thing going.
On Monday night, the Council passed on first reading a resolution to help with this matter. The resolution, which was an additional appropriation ordinance, would give them the authority to spend $38,000 on a boiler and asked for another $100,000 if needed.
“What that means is we have a Rainy Day Fund,” said Sheets. “None of that Rainy Day Fund is appropriated. So, if something comes up that we need to fix something, we can go back and get that money. Then we would go through two reading with the council and if that ordinance passes, then it goes to Local Government Finance there they will approve it or disapprove it.”
Some of the problems so far include a leak in the closed loop system, which has an estimated cost of $2,432.33. Another area of concern is that each office in the mayor’s and clerk-treasurer’s office, had there own system. Sheets said that in the clerk treasurer’s office, that system has a lot of age on it and probably has never been replaced added to replace it is $7,984. Workers also came in to fix that part of the HVAC system the best they could and that bill was $1,295.
Sheets added they are replacing the heat exchange plates, which is a preventive measure that needs to be done as soon as possible.
“We’re going to have moving forward a preventive working maintenance schedule and to make sure we’re on top of everything,” said Sheets. “The cost of all of them is around $85,000.”