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Facilities director outlines widespread maintenance needs; frequent power outages have damaged equipment
Summary
Director of facilities Lehi Burnham updated the committee on district maintenance: aging roofs, HVAC and sprinkler work, security audits, persistent power outages that damaged equipment, and challenges reconciling solar production with Eversource billing.
Director of Facilities Lehi Burnham told the School Committee the district completed targeted drainage, paving and vegetation work in partnership with the Department of Public Works and that many buildings need mechanical upgrades, roofing work and electrical fixes.
Burnham said roof systems across the district are aging — several buildings have roofs older than 20 years — and two roofs (Shamrock and Linscott) are in “critical” condition. Routine mechanical and fire-sprinkler work is underway; the district has been replacing or testing sprinkler heads and rehabilitating a chiller at Shamrock. He said many buildings need roof, parking-lot and flooring work in the coming years.
Burnham warned that repeated short power outages have caused “catastrophic” failures in electronic systems: building management system controllers, elevator dialers, fire alarm amplifiers and UPS batteries have been replaced at significant cost. He said some outages have occurred more than 10 times at the high school in recent months, and that surge-related equipment damage has been expensive.
On energy, Burnham said dashboards are active for the district’s solar systems except the high school’s 30 kW array, which is not performing at full capacity and needs repair. He said Eversource’s billing-platform changes last June have made it difficult to reconcile solar credits and that the city faces unresolved billing issues. He recommended pursuing grants and identified lock changes, security vendor updates and work-order management rollout as near-term projects.
Committee members asked about causes of outages, fundraising or bonding for roofs, the district’s capital list and whether a city grant writer could help with applications. Burnham said National Grid inspected a decade-long gas leak issue that he believes is resolved but that some items (e.g., storm-related outages) remain unresolved.
