Seymour City Hall will get a new air conditioning system sooner rather than later.
On Thursday, the Seymour Board of Public Works and Safety approved Mayor Matt Nicholson’s declaration of emergency for renovations after a chiller went down, causing a water leak and “pretty substantial damage.”
“On Tuesday, I got a phone call about 7:30 a.m. that there was a small water leak,” Nicholson said. “At 7:38 when I got here, the water leak had covered about half of the back room.”
Pardieck’s Inc. was called in to diagnose the problem and came to the conclusion the air conditioning system is not repairable.
“We’re going to have to replace it,” Nicholson said. “We knew this day would come. We were just hoping it was 10 years from now.”
By declaring the situation an emergency, Nicholson said it allows him to seek quotes for the project and get things moving quicker than normal.
“I’m still going for three quotes, and I’m going to try to keep everything as normal as possible,” he said. “But by issuing this declaration, it allows us to speed the process up just a little.”
Nicholson wants city hall to have air conditioning available before warmer temperatures arrive.
A new HVAC system and renovations were supposed to happen in 2017. Most of the heating and cooling equipment in the building is pre-1980s.
In late 2016, then-city engineer Nathan Frey said the HVAC system was about 10 years past its useful life cycle.
Current city engineer Bernie Hauersperger said a “Band-Aid” has been put on the problem for too long and it’s time to do a major fix.
“We just need to bite the bullet,” he said.
Nicholson said he remembers former city leaders discussing the problem, but he doesn’t know why the project never happened. At the time, it was estimated the cost to replace the HVAC along with new lighting, insulation, ceiling tiles and carpet throughout the building was going to be more than $1 million.
“My guess would be the price tag was more than could be done at the time,” he said.
Initially, Nicholson’s goal was to tackle city hall’s needs at the same time Seymour’s new fire station is being constructed.
“We are still several months out from the fire station, but we have some money still available from last year’s capital bond that we can replenish after another bond is issued later this year,” he said.
The new bond will cover the costs of both the fire station and city hall renovations, he said.
“Yesterday’s action speeds up the process when it comes to solving the immediate cooling issue,” Nicholson said. “Now, we just need to wait on quotes to come back to see exactly where we are at.”