The Polk County Government Center will be getting a new elevator at some point in the near future. Staff discussed the need for an upgrade Tuesday with the Polk County Commissioners.
The current elevator has an electrical system operating it that was built in the 1950s that was bought used when the county installed the elevator. Repairs needs for the elevator have been increasing steadily over the last several years and this spring the elevator has twice gotten stuck, once with a staff member inside and once with a community member. Polk County Administrator Chuck Whiting said they hope to have some quotes by the next board meeting to address the elevator before it becomes a greater problem. “We have outdated equipment running our elevator here in the government center and it’s time to address that and get it replaced,” said Whiting. “We’ve had the elevator get stuck a couple of times this year. That’s not healthy for the public coming into the building nor for our employees. We’ve got some technology that goes back to the 50s running the elevator, so I think we’ve gotten our money’s worth. But we want to make we address something before it becomes a real problem.”
The elevator replacement is expected to last about six weeks, meaning there may be some convenience and mobility issues for people needing to reach offices on the lower or upper floors.
The remodeling project at the county’s East Grand Forks building is near completion with the idea that Northwest Mental Health, who signed a long-term lease for the remodeled space, will be able to move on May 1. “We have a project update on our remodeling of part of our building in East Grand Forks,” said Whiting. “We expanded some space, new offices in exchange for a long-term lease with Northwest Mental Health. They reside in that building, work with us and make it easy for clientele to access necessary services out there. That project is near completion and hopefully, they are up and running the first week of May. We’ll then get our building committee and staff together to look at what needs to be done for the rest of the building and the budget parameters we’ll need to work within.”
The East Grand Forks building was purchased a few years ago with the County aware that additional remodeling and maintenance projects would need to be addressed. One of those projects is for a new heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, and leaks in the roof have also been discovered recently. “The roof and HVAC system are going to need replacing,” said Whiting. “These are things that go back to the purchase of the building several years ago. We kind of knew we were going to face that. It’s kind of the next step in improving the building.”
Several other county buildings also have their roofs nearing the end of their life expectancy, so a large roofing project across several buildings could be possible.
Polk County will be conducting a bond sale on May 7 for Highway Department projects and for requested debt issuance by three local watersheds. Whiting said the county will often offer bond sales for Highway projects using its County State Aid funds to do multiple projects at one time rather than spreading them out. “On May 7 we’ll have a bond sale issuing debt for about $6 million of Highway projects,” said Whiting. “Those are projects that are funded by County State Aid money, so they aren’t local taxes they are state revenues that pay for that. We do $6 million in projects at one time instead of spreading it out over five or six years. We can get some cost-effective return there and then we use the County State Aid Revenues we get to pay back the debt so there are no local property taxes that go into that.”
The debt issuance on behalf of the three watershed districts – Red Lake, Middle-Snake-Tamarac, and Sand Hill – will total just shy of $4 million dollars and the districts pay off that debt by assessing the property owners that see improvement from the projects.
The Commissioners also approved their consent agenda which included approving the auditor warrants; approving payments of $4,391.76 and $74.94 to Hewlett Packard Inc for the IT Department; approving payment of $2,710.00 to SHI of Dallas, Texas for the IT Department; approving payment of $325.00 to Protection System Inc of Fargo, North Dakota for the Facilities Department; approving payment of $227.00 to the Grand Forks Herald for the Incinerator; approving payment of $892.47 to Johnson Controls Fire Protection LP of Palatine, Illinois for the Facilities Department; and approving payment of $1,404.00 to GHA Technologies, Inc. of Phoenix, Arizona for the IT Department.
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