Public Safety Dorm rooms using AC window units

Above: You can’t see the small, high windows overlooking the fire department’s apparatus bay, but they have been used this summer for air conditioning units in the firefighter’s sleeping quarters. (photo by Beth Melo)

Recently, the Town Administrator confirmed that the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is for the Public Safety Building is being supplemented by window AC units in the firefighter’s dorm rooms on nights when the weather is “hot and muggy”.

TA Mark Purple’s message was in response to an inquiry I made about whether the HVAC hasn’t been cooling the Fire Department’s side of the building sufficiently, and if it has been an ongoing issue from the beginning. Purple claimed that the system is “working appropriately during the day but becomes less effective during the night when the dorm room doors are closed and Fire personnel are sleeping.”

Of course, officials knew that firefighters would be sleeping in those rooms with doors closed when the building was designed and constructed.

For years, I’ve heard rumors that there have been continual problems with the HVAC and other systems at the combined police and fire station since it opened. I can’t confirm that is true.* I can verify that there were problems during the first year. Those were publicly referred to in 2019 and 2020 as the kinds of issues officials should expect when settling into a new building.

Given the public debate over the building’s utility costs in 2020, it’s also worth pointing out that the AC units will presumably add to the utility costs of the building.

Past acknowledgement of HVAC issues

According to minutes from a September 17, 2019 Public Safety Building Committee meeting (12 days after the Southborough Fire Department began operating out of the new building): 

[Fire Chief Steven Achilles] said that they are still having problems with the balancing of the HVAC system in the Firefighter dorms. Most of the rooms continue to be too hot.

In minutes from the October 7, 2019 meeting:

[Committee Chair Jason Malinowski] said that Chief Achilles has been emailing him about the Fire dorms being hot and the need to balance the dorms and other rooms throughout the building. Chief Paulhus informed the Committee of a problem in the server room with the HVAC system. They had a meeting today to trouble shoot the problem. Chief Paulhus said that he anticipated these problems will be ongoing for a while after speaking to area Chiefs who moved into new buildings.

That was the last time the issue was raised in the committee’s meetings. However, the weather obviously got cooler that fall, and the committee’s final meeting took place in early spring.

However, discussion at an Advisory Committee Meeting on December 9, 2020 made clear the issues weren’t minor. At the meeting, members discussed whether it would make sense to invest in warrantees to cover equipment services. The initial equipment warrantees included in the construction contract only lasted for a year.

Member John Rooney asked about how much the service those warrantees covered would have cost that first year. Malinowski and Facilities Director John Parent seemed to believe the first year wasn’t a good indicator for future years. They said the contractors “were constantly there for a year”. Parent explained that with a complex building that size with many mechanical/electronic components, “you’ve got a much better chance that a few of them are going to be bad. And unfortunately it generally happens after the warranty period.”

He followed that if they hadn’t had the warrantees:

the HVAC alone would far surpass what we have budgeted. The first year of HVAC was a lot of shakedown. Jason’s very familiar with what I’ve been working with in the last year over there with that. Again, it’s coming under control.

He recommended purchasing a Time & Materials policy for the first 1-2 years.

A few weeks prior, Parent told the Municipal Techology Committee that the building was “pretty state of the art”. He explained that he could “track” each room in the building remotely and look at the history:

If I’m having a problem with the system we can look through it we can try to determine what’s going on just by looking at our system. So, that’s actually quite helpful we can call the companies that manage those systems, we can call the HVAC company we say look this is what we got going on, then you get the proper technician and repair person.

Building Operation Costs

The first Annual Town Meeting after the building was operating took place in June of 2020. (The meeting was delayed from March due to the pandemic.)

In the budget for FY21, a line item for the Town’s Operating Budget requested a 26.63% increase (to raise it from $359,895 to $455,728). Parent justified the  increase as due to engineers’ projected energy costs for the new Public Safety Building. Even after getting rid of the old stations and Fayville Hall the square footage of the Town’s building inventory was up 22%.

As a former Chair of the committee that studied the potential project, Al Hamilton objected. He stated the committee had been told they would save costs on maintenance and operations of a new building, since the old stations were so inefficient.

Hamilton made a motion to reduce the request to $400K, which was still an over 11% increase. Malinowski supported the reduction, saying that he was dismayed the Public Safety Building Committee hadn’t been brought the energy numbers to vet. Voters agreed with them. (You can read more about that here.)

Towards the end of FY21, Advisory Committee minutes stated that Parent reported that he may be $20-$25K over budget on utilities. However, the increased costs were partially due to the Covid-based need to run the HVAC 100% on new air rather than recycling air. Therefore, he believed some of the money was eligible for federal reimbursement.

Since then, the Facilities’ operations budget increased 4.17% for FY22, 8.52% for FY23, and 19.76% this last spring, bringing it to $541,531.

*I considered filing a public records request for all communications and emails around the issues. (I certainly am curious.) But, as a taxpayer, I always consider whether the administrative burden on Town staff is worth it. Here, I decided to limit myself to requesting the minutes for the dissolved Public Safety Building Committee which hadn’t yet been moved over to the Town’s updated website.