Finance Committee - 01/06/2021 Page 7
ON THE QUESTION
| see that we have Ms. Kleiner, Administrative Services Director here and | suspect she’s here to address this
item?
Kim Kleiner, Director of Administrative Services
Good evening, Mayor, Members of the Finance Committee. Yes, so what you will see here is throughout the
past few months with this project starting in October and still presently in the works we have had a number of
change orders; none of which are of great surprise. When you have a project of this sort with a building the
age of City Hall, it's to be expected that you are going to find things, once you get into the type of construction
that we are undertaking. There is certainly some where we have tried to cut expenses, we have done so, so
you will see a number of credits that are offset by some other unforeseen charges that were completely
necessary in order to move forward with the project.
Just to give the Committee a little bit of wnere we are currently; Assessing — we expect to be done and have
some staff back in by the end of the month. Motor vehicles is going to take a little longer with materials being
delayed due to COVID. But we are hoping for the end of February. And then we will move on to the City Clerk
once both of these Departments are finished. And | can certainly speak to any of the items that are listed or
any of the change orders. | do think the most important to note is in Change Order 1, there was some
abatement work that needed to be done for asbestos that was found in both the motor vehicles flooring and the
pipes within the Assessing ceiling. We knew that we may come across some, so prior to starting the project,
Risk Management had called in a firm and they had given us an estimate which was included in the RFP. We
made sure it was included in the bid, however, it was not enough once they reached down and really looked
into the scope of the sub-flooring. So that’s one of the most costly items that you will see.
Mayor Donchess
Any questions from the Committee? Alderman O’Brien?
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you Mr. Mayor and | would like to address a question to Ms. Kleiner. Maybe the public would like to
know the history of City Hall, about when it was built during the Depression Era. It was built economically at
the time so | think today we are trying to keep it modern, save the taxpayers instead of replacing it. It is a grand
old building. So all this money, it is about time, because a lot of this stuff is antiquated. | do know we have
some staff almost offices are in closets. But we are doing well and making space, so if you could speak
something on how we are really trying to improve all of that.
Director Kleiner
Certainly and Alderman O’Brien you couldn’t be more correct. Not only is it an old building, there are
significant space issues within City Hall and we’ve tried to be as creative as possible as staff is added or
Departments change in their scope and their size. I'll give you a for instance, part of this project included when
you are entering from the back of the Elm Street entrance, and heading into the Rotunda, there was a doorway
there that was a single doorway due to the addition on the old original City Hall. That doorway, being a single
doorway into a very large Rotunda, often caused problems for people. It certainly called problems for social
distancing. In order to widen that doorway to the size that it should have been had the building originally been
built to have that hallway, we actually had to remove the marble on the Rotunda side of the hallway. That has
to be done very carefully, there are very few contractors that will even undertake this work. We are very happy
with how it has turned out and we wanted to make sure that the historical preservation of the building was
intact.
