New General Services department cites $295M deferred maintenance, $11M in FY26 for facilities

Gail Johnson, director of Richmond’s newly formed Department of General Services (DGS), briefed council on facility condition, deferred maintenance and a generalized capital-maintenance program intended to give the city more flexibility to address building needs and emergencies.

Johnson said DGS maintains roughly 74 facilities and currently accomplishes about 30% of facility work with in-house skilled staff; the department plans to add a facility-maintenance group in FY26 to standardize maintenance across city-owned properties. A 2019 facility-condition assessment covering 70 general-services buildings and six DPU buildings estimated about $295 million in deferred maintenance when escalated to current costs; Johnson said the city is updating assessments and implementing software to track condition and prioritize work.

DGS reported three of the most deficient buildings identified in the 2019 study as City Hall, the John Marshall Courthouse and the Main Library (all previously rated poor on the facility-condition index). Johnson said targeted projects for FY26 include riser-valve work and replacing a chiller and elevator work at City Hall; elevator and roof considerations at the John Marshall building; and boiler/chiller, lighting and porch surfacing work at the Main Library.

Budget and approach: Johnson described a FY26 generalized capital-maintenance program totaling $16.1 million citywide; about $11 million of that is dedicated to general-services facility projects, with the remainder funding parks and recreation items included in the consolidated line item. Johnson said the $11 million would address only a small share (roughly 4%) of the total generalized need identified in the condition assessment. The DGS operating budget supports preventive and corrective maintenance (about $20 million annually), of which about $4 million covers utilities inside the buildings DGS maintains.

Staffing and procurement: Johnson said the department currently relies on about 30% in-house execution and is actively recruiting to grow skilled trades capacity (they estimate an ideal complement of about 62 skilled maintenance staff for the facilities portfolio). She described recruiting challenges—particularly plumbing and electrician trades—and said DGS is working with HR and local technical centers to build pipelines for those trades. The new maintenance-management software will feed prioritized capital requests to the CIP process.

Council questions focused on whether some large deferred-maintenance projects should be deferred in favor of replacement and on the potential operating savings from capital investments. Johnson said each project is evaluated case by case and that some big-ticket items—like City Hall riser-valve replacement—would be weighed against full replacement options. She said the department will provide a FY26 spending plan for the generalized capital-maintenance allocation and can give more detailed estimates of expected operating savings from major mechanical investments.