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Lee County committee hears facilities maintenance report outlining courthouse, jail and energy issues
Summary
Facilities staff told the Lee County Facilities Maintenance Committee that the Law Enforcement Center and new courthouse account for the bulk of maintenance requests, described repeated HVAC failures at the new courthouse, reported 214 unplanned work requests and outlined modest energy-saving opportunities.
At a meeting of the Lee County Facilities Maintenance Committee, facilities staff described a busy maintenance workload concentrated at the county’s Law Enforcement Center and new courthouse, repeated failures of several HVAC components at the new courthouse and a range of repair and energy-efficiency projects in progress.
The committee heard that unplanned maintenance is frequent: “we've gone through 214 unplanned work requests,” facilities staff member Eric said, adding that 62 percent of work was planned preventive maintenance and 38 percent was unplanned. He said the Law Enforcement Center (LEC) and the new courthouse together consume roughly 70 percent of the team’s time, while the building where the committee met accounts for roughly 20 percent.
The report cataloged multiple building-specific items. At the new courthouse, five of six rooftop unit (RTU) fan motors failed — and reportedly failed again — within the past month; staff said some replacement parts were bad out of the box and that a manufacturer-recommended part number should not be used. Eric said a vendor named Hartwig had not been aware of the part-number problem. He also reported that LED lamp replacements are about 97 percent complete and that a mini-split system will be installed in the FTR room to reduce extreme temperatures around servers.
Eric described a repair option that would reduce costs for failing pneumatic control boards. The boards cost about $1,200 each new; a repair shop in California can rebuild them for about $200, he said. He also said recent parking-lot work included sealcoating and striping for the main lot, the Hennepin lot, animal control and a judge’s parking area; full replacement of several lots may be needed within 10 years.
Jail maintenance requests were described as unusually numerous and often involved deliberate damage. "There's been a slew" of requests, Eric said, and staff expect to send a technician, Zach, to address the damage and tidy affected areas.
On energy efficiency, Eric said the county had an energy consultation with ComEd and identified building-automation scheduling as a potential $10,000-a-year savings. He noted a technical limit: only 18 of roughly 90 VAV units in the new courthouse currently support the proposed remote scheduling, and retrofitting the others would require additional funding and programming.
Other items in the report included the recent installation of a pressure-reducing valve at Old Courts, ongoing generator problems that Caterpillar engineers were investigating, and plans for a retaining-wall project with Wilton Hoffman surveying drawings and returning with cost estimates next month.
Committee members asked for clarification about the RTU parts; Eric attributed some failures to bad parts and to other motors that were simply going bad in service. He also asked whether the committee wanted to be involved in capital planning; committee members agreed that having the capital-project budget proposals brought to the committee would be appropriate.
The committee took no formal votes on capital projects or hiring; the only formal action recorded was an adjournment motion moved by Jack Scroxton and seconded by Mike Pearson, approved by voice vote.
