Special Board of Aldermen 04-26-2021 Page 5
At this time, I'd like to share a short PowerPoint slide presentation if that would be all right to share my
screen.
Chairman Dowd
That’s fine, yup.
Captain Dan Mederos, Nashua Police
So what we're looking at here is something that has come before Budget Review and the Aldermen
regarding our HVAC system. At this time we are moving forward looking to request that additional funds to
support the previous funding that we appropriated which was $2.8 million back in April of 2019 for the
upgrade of our HVAC system, the heating ventilation, air conditioning, as well as replacement of windows
at that time. So total now for this whole project, we’re looking at approximately $4,350,000.
Just to go back and give you historical data of what led us up to this point is many of you are aware that the
original police department here was built in 1977 and we had an addition built almost doubling the size
back in 1999 and completed around 2001. Both those individual HVAC systems were independent
systems of themselves and currently we’ve been able to modify them that we have one controlling system
for those HVAC systems. Fortunately in 2005 we were able to secure some funds and have to cut back a
project but were able to make several modifications to all the vintage 1977 mechanical systems to include
pumps, heating pumps, a boiler, and modifying the exhaust system that we have here. Unfortunately at that
time, we weren’t able to upgrade the 1977 mechanical room as well as the ventilation system for our indoor
pistol range as well as the heating systems in our fleet maintenance garage area.
Since 2005 in those modifications, we have had significant failures and issues with the HVAC system in
both areas as a whole. These failures have caused multiple troubleshooting sessions with our service
contractors just shown to be totally inefficient to the point where our city Energy Manager Doria Brown has
made comments about our energy bills being one of the highest in the city. It was due to most of these
calls and efficiencies where we were finally able to contract out to SMRT, Inc. in early 2019 to do an
assessment in inventory of our whole HVAC system. With that going forward, they made several
recommendations to upgrade and change our overall systems with basically salvaging very few of the
mechanical that we have at this current time. We were able to receive an approximation being $2.5 million
for that moving forward. With that, we were able to go ahead and hire Yeaton & Associates to contract a
design and engineer in each system for us. We were finally able to go forward and receive that funding for
the $2.8 million to also include upgrading of the windows in our 1977 portion of the building to assist with
energy costs.
Unfortunately due to the pandemic and the design costs, we weren’t able to get that design in until the end
of 2020 and go out to bid with the city until February of 2021 of this year. At that time, we do have a
proposed bid that we’d like to move forward with. It was the lowest bidder which was Turnstone
Construction. That came in just over $3.6 million. At this point, it’s left us short in those fundings to move
forward.
In the meantime, we’ve identified other areas that need improvement here at the police department which
includes our locker room areas. Especially the locker rooms that have been here since 1977. There have
been some upgrades when the new addition was built in 2001 but many of those lockers that we’ve been
dealing with over time that are approximately 42 years old right now have had some sort of disrepair,
rusting, mechanical issues, hinges not working just due to the overall use here. We have approximately 37
of those lockers that are totally out of service. In the past few years we’ve had to have our building
maintenance folks attached actually shed hasps to actually be able to secure many of these lockers. As
you all know here at the police department, there’s many officers that don’t have an office space or other
places to keep their equipment. The locker room and the lockers that the folks use here at the police
department for the majority of us, they are your primary office that’s where you secure all your gear,
including your weapon.
