Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing — 12/16/2019 Page 8
The budgets don’t include a number of things in terms of structural engineering, Haz Mat surveys, mold
remediation. We carried things into 2020, if this got postponed a year or two, costs would likely go up as
escalation is trending in that way; so it is something to consider.
We also were tasked with looking at “what would it cost to build a new office building at the landfill’. So we
went through a program, the architect got involved a little bit here and they were able to modify a program that
they did earlier and were able to come up with a program that works, there’s 25,000 square feet. When you go
through the whole process, you will see that it costs about $9.9 million dollars to build a facility that has a lot of
benefits to the Department. With the new building you’d have an optimum program, you’d have a healthy
environment which | think is a real important thing to consider in this process; lower utilities, less maintenance,
even renovating these building, they are not going to be the most energy efficient buildings in the world There
would be a lot of shared areas between departments, there will be energy efficiencies, there’s savings on the
construction side of things. We are not moving general conditions over four different projects over four
different durations of construction. We are talking about expediting one building at one time. From an
operational perspective and I'll let the Director and others talk about that but there a ton of benefits in regards
to that. Certainly | think there are benefits to the City of Nashua as well. It gives the taxpayers the right
investment, | think it is going to help you hire employees that might not come to the City based on the current
conditions. The City employees will be healthier and happier and | think that all results in better service to the
City. So | am done.
Ms. Fauteux
Thank you Rob. This is actually going to be the end. So Commissioner Frank Teas will conclude our
presentation with a summary of our work and explain our recommendation.
Frank Teas, Board of Public Works Commissioner
Good evening, Frank Teas, Board of Public Works Commissioner, | first want to state that we were not brought
together as a sub-committee to build a new building at the landfill. We were asked by the Mayor to evaluate the
current conditions of where our folks work. We care about a safe and healthy work environment for the staff
while also obviously being very fiscally responsible. To outline again what was said earlier, we as a group, the
Board of Commissioners identified that we had a problem. We then took action to memorialize these
problems; healthy work environment was not there, didn’t have the ability really for future growth. We needed
to pay some attention to our infrastructure that was long overdue; we felt there was always kind of a Band-Aid
approach in the past and we wanted a strategic direction.
We, as a Committee to include several Aldermen and other stakeholders, met and developed a plan. So we
could either look to renovate or look for new construction; not look for new construction at the landfill, look for
new construction or renovate. We are not experts, so we thought it prudent to bring in an expert, you just
heard from the expert. The results were pretty eye opening for us as a subcommittee when we met back a few
weeks ago and received this report you saw. $15.9 million dollars to renovate, that is really our optimal
solution, it doesn’t address future growth. Certainly it addressed some of the problems that we have. $9.9
million dollars to build a new building somewhere, doesn’t include land, but somewhere. It gives us a new
work facility, addresses our future growth, energy and workplace efficiencies, putting more people under one
roof, only having one lunch room as opposed to five different lunch rooms and so forth. It allows us to
repurpose existing buildings. 38% savings, if you will, the 38% less to build at $9.9 then to renovate at $15.9
for brand new; | am a numbers person that stuck out at me pretty obviously. But there was one caveat, we
didn’t have a place to build it.
Of course, I’ve said 5 times already the landfill, that was something that people had discussed. Why the landfill
was of interest to us was for several reasons. It would, in theory, not cost us any new money. So we are not
adding an additional dollar to that $9.9 million dollars. There are currently no other opportunities to buy a large
piece of land in which we can place this building, or none that I’m aware of that would be reasonably priced.
Lastly, we thought it important to not remove another tax producing asset from the books. So if we bought
something new we would then lose out on the real estate taxes.
