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Panel OKs heating-system pact for Oakhill
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Building Commission awarded a $3,031,660 contract to Prout Boiler, Heating and Welding Inc. of Youngstown to install a new heating system at Oakhill Renaissance Place.
Some $2,608,385 from federal stimulus funds is going toward that project.
Carol McFall, chief deputy county auditor, said, however, the county does not have the money in hand to pay for the remainder of the cost of the Prout contract and for the additional $378,000 cost of purchasing the boilers. “You’re going to have to go borrow it,” she said.
“We will not be able to cut a purchase order unless all that funding’s in place,” James Fortunato, county purchasing director, told the commission Thursday.
John A. McNally IV, chairman of the county commissioners, said the commissioners will meet next week with bond counsel to discuss the county’s borrowing needs, including money to be borrowed for the Oakhill project.
Under terms of the stimulus grant, the boiler installation must be completed by June 2, 2012, said Tracie Kaglic, Oakhill project manager with Olsavsky-Jaminet Architects.
The new system, consisting of 13 natural-gas-fired boilers distributed among six locations, will replace steam from Youngstown Thermal Ltd. as the building’s heating source, said Pete Verostko, heating consultant for the Oakhill project.
The new system will allow better regulation of temperature consistent with the hours of operation in each of the six heating zones, Verostko said. Prout was the lowest of three bidders for installation of the new system, whose boilers will be up to 96 percent efficient, he added.
The commission also heard complaints from Thomas McCabe, county elections director, and Joyce Kale-Pesta, elections deputy director, about water leaking from the roof into buckets in hallways, water-stained tiles and wet carpeting in the board’s new offices on Oakhill’s first floor.
The commission voted to seek bids to replace the section of roof that leaks — a job Architect Ray Jaminet said would cost less than $25,000.
The elections board, which is now at the county’s South Side Annex on Market Street, has begun moving its equipment to Oakhill and must complete its move by Sept. 15 or wait until after the Nov. 8 election to complete it, Kale-Pesta said. She said she hopes the move can be finished by Sept. 1.
Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, which the county bought for use as a county office complex in 2006.
In other action, Tim O’Brien was sworn in as a new building commission member, replacing Joseph Sylvester Jr., who resigned.