May 30, 2012: Uses of School, Pt. 2; Public Comment also

This part of the report begins with discussion of renovation and repairs. I apologize for how long it is.  There did not seem to be a logical place to stop without breaking the continuity.

Renovations and Repairs
Jason distinguished between what is needed and what is desired.  He said that these are two different things.  [No specific examples of the differences were given.]
The public need to have a building that is presentable and retains its historic character but that conveys a feeling that work has been done to bring it out.

Cost estimates:  We need to go right down the line with everything that needs to be done.  If we are going to open one room, we should get the whole floor open.  The fiscal officer is not the only one who needs office space. 
Needs:  Paint, carpet the floor, tile, lighting, windows.

Sourcing dollars:  We need to get a professional contractor--actually, more than one--to provide cost estimates.  I would like to have someone who has painted to do that kind of work to manage volunteers.
This needs to be someone who is independent and professional and has the best interest of the township and community at heart.

Carole Pollard:  Two things connect to your previous comments.  One is the historical character of the building and I appreciate that you are taking that into account.  Historical accuracy can't be imitated.  I suggest that anyone who wants a wonderful experience go to Chagrin Falls and visit their Town Hall.   It is a former opera house that burned, but they rebuilt it.  It is a timber framed building, open clear to the ceiling, perhaps 30 feet.  I am not saying we should do what they did.  It is a wonderful building done sensitively and carefully.  Also, they dealt with some accessibility issuers, not as challenging as what we have.

I talked with Dave Sommers a couple of times.  The elevator at the County Prosecutor's Office (designed by Sommers' firm), added externally to a conventionally constructed building, cost $250,000.  Getting into our building without damaging it or without spending more money than we did to buy the building would require some very creative solutions .

One more thing is that I understand that the floors in our building are concrete slabs.  If they are solid concrete, you are not going to mess with them.  There is wood over them, and if the floors appear to sag, it may be because the stringers have collapsed.  I wonder if there is any asbestos in them at all; they look like naked concrete.  I have serious doubts about whether the asbestos "issue" is a real issue.  It has been laid to rest time after time, but it is like a hydra--cut off one head, and another pops up.

Jason:   To address you last comment--I think that in my mind asbestos or any other contaminating materials need to be addressed before we begin tearing things out.  I think it is absolutely a need before we go forward with our game plan.  [Blogger:  Didn't I just say that the issue had been dealt with time after time?  How many more times does the wheel need to be reinvented, and how long will that take, being sure that "we do it right"?]  

Linda Ehlert:  Two things.  I did get the name of a contractor from a historical engineer/architect in Kent.  He has done some of the historic work on the Johnson Farm on Pioneer Trail and the restoration of the Mormon church in Kirtland.  Dr. Robison in Kent said he would probably be reasonable because saving historic buildings is his forte.

Cal Brant came in about 9:45, which is around the time that Linda made the above comment.

Linda, continuing:  I also wanted to say that from a historical perspective I have been working to see what I can do with major corporations that help communities.  I have a commitment from one of them for paint.  That could be starting with one room or more.
There are also grants available for restoring communities and community buildings.  So, in the background, I am working like you.  Some grants can be pretty liberal.  I am more than happy to bring money in.

John Festa:  I want to address the accessibility issues.  John Festa referred toSaint Paul's Hospital/Hotel.

[Blogger:  I believe that was in reference to the kind of lift that is in that structure.  I also do not know whether "lift" means what most of us would call an elevator or whether it is something else that would address accessibility issues. Remember that John Festa works for an elevator company. That could mean expert advice for the township, or it could represent a conflict of interest.]

John Festa, continuing:  A lift can be put into that building internally.  It is expensive but it can be done without touching the outside.  [Blogger:  An associate of mine--MBA with an undergraduate degree in engineering--was an executive in Schindler Elevator's corporate offices for a number of years.  His comment on retrofitting for an elevator is that it is extremely expensive and involves doing a complete structural analysis of the building.  More time, more money.]

John Festa, continuing:  I agree with Jason about the environmental issues before we attempt to put a nail in the wall.  I want someone with credentials.  I do not want it coming back 15 years in the future to haunt us.

  [Blogger:  The phrase "to haunt us" seems to come up frequently in John Festa's remarks.]

Continuing:  Possible formation of a committee for the public to get involved.  I do think they can have recommendations or [be] volunteers.  Maybe we can get an architect or engineer and see what they will come up with.  [Blogger:  $$$$$$/TIME]  We need to get the general public involved so people can see how their dollars are besing spent.  Comply with the Ohio Building Code.
 [Blogger:  The section of the Ohio Building Code that now applies to the school building is Section 34, which considers historic buildings.  Also, some members of the renewed Restoration Society thought we were a committee--a committee interested enough to be pro-active instead of waiting for someone to tell us we could serve.]

Pat Magyarics:  To Jason:  I remember  you quoting your grandfather [Willis Carlton, a Township Trustee for 25 years] when you ran for this office and you wanted to follow in his legacy.  I knew your grandfather--my grandparents knew yours.  When I look at these buildings I see your grandparents--they left them to us to enjoy.  I am one of the few surviving members of that [original] restoration society.  I am hoping that 35 years or so from now someone says, "I remember him and he gave us this."

Do not discredit the local volunteers at all.  They did a darned good job on these buildings.  We have all worked together as local people and volunteers.  Do not discredit the local people, because they can move mountains.  I hope that someone down the road sometime can say, "We have this because of Jason."

Mark Hall:  We have talked about office hours.  Each of you has a home office but no one has set office hours--is that correct?  [There were nods of agreement to that.]
Heating:  The heating system has two modes--occupied and unoccupied.  In the unoccupied mode, the system operates off one thermostat.  Based on the west room upstairs, if that room is at 60 degrees, the room is safe.  If the outside temperature goes above 50 degrees, it shuts down.  It is a damper system but there are some ___ [Blogger:  missed this word]  It does maintain a plenum temperature.  In the occupied mode, once the temperature goes above 60 degrees outside, the system shuts down as energy savings.  You would want to have some heat upstairs.  I wanted to offer that.

[Blogger:   During the last part of his term as trustee, Mark paid special attention to the heating system and its controls and saved the Township a good deal of money in service charges.  I also think I remember that the system had been misadjusted, and he corrected that.] 

Mark, continuing:   Concerning community involvement:  We resurrected The Mantua Restoration Society, Inc., and we have been looking at things.  The estimate for the Fiscal Officer--we have an estimate of $1900.  Working with the Trustees through the restoration society, we can look at getting something going with the trustees.

We can make it presentable as a keystone benchmark as a place to start.

We can keep an eye open to the long term.  The trustees will need a place for an office--it could be the north room with nothing elaborate, the same for the east room, nothing elaborate but presentable.
We are here as a community group with an eye on the school.
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The immediate need is to work with you to get space for the Fiscal Officer.  Let's see what we can get going with a simple straightforward starting point.  We are not talking about tearing out the walls.

Jason:  I don't think we are talking about anything terribly difficult, but we need to look at it.  There is an immediate need but there is also the vision down the road.

Mark Hall:  Not Marie's office, but the officers who will work in that room.  This is not for personal offices, but the office for the position, not the person.

Jason commented that the distinction seemed a bit like splitting hairs.  Larry Leitzow muttered, but audibly,  "He always splits hairs."  This little snippet will make more sense later in the record.  
Dave Pollard:  Regarding the floors:  The concrete floors were made to drain water, and all go to a drain that runs to the outside.  That is why the floors all have a concavity.  We put our winter shoes and gloves on the cold air returns [when we were going there].  There is a solid concrete floor.

 Accessibility out front:  The Mantua Restoration Society, Inc., has been talking about ways to address that, but it is not immediate. 

There are expensive ways to install a lift to get up to the entrance level.  In the 70's, they raised  $29,000 for restoration and renovation. 

In Montville, $250,000 has been raised [for a cause of high concern to the residents]. 
Dave, continuing:  Some solutions may not be as elegant as you might like, but they may be safer.

Jason, you brought up hazardous materials.  That has been a point of contention.  I have talked to people, and this includes myself, who would be willing to come up with the money to pay that [inspection] fee so there is no net cost to the taxpayer.  Part of our goal is to do this at no net cost for the taxpayer.  We want to see us in there.  I think it is the best building.  I have been in the village school--your uncle [Jerry Carlton] did a heck of a job but he had a lot of help with the hospital moving in.

Jason, to Dave:  The historical society project, funding for the veterans' memorial project had trouble with funds. 
[Blogger:  All projects and all groups supporting them are not the same, and looking beyond the surface can often make it clear why some fail while others succeed.  That truism applies here, too.]

Jason, continuing:  Over 10-15 years it might be possible but I am skeptical about doing it now.

Dave:  Under the new parameters, once that [designation on The National Register of Historic Places]comes through, then we are able to explore grant sources not available till then.

Carole Pollard:   With a good enough cause, people are willing to raise the money.  With Montville, they have raised that $250,000 with ethnic potluck dinners, 50-50 raffles, gun raffles, nights at the races--very common and ordinary things. 

The [Record Courier] article about our first step towards historic designation got a lot of attention, and people were full of smiles about it.  The enthusiasm that designation will get us will help fuel public support.  That designation also really gives a huge impetus to favorable public opinion for that building and resistance to anything that would be seen as damaging it.  It may be a double edged sword, but when you have people that excited  about something, it's important. 

Do you realize that the only three school buildings saved in Portage County are ours?  Shalersville, your uncle's building [the Village school building], and ours.  Nobody else has done that--nobody else.  People have talked about what a treasure this area is and it is not advertised--the hiking trail, canoe livery, Pioneer Trail Orchards, the Mormon home, the Mormon Church.  If you drive from our school building to the grain mill in Mantua via Center Road and Prospect Street, and look at what is there, we have a historic corridor.  We already have a designated historic district.

Those things are all very important to people who are normally rather quiet, but they feel very deeply about these things.

I have one thing to say about the hairsplitting about whether we are renovating for Marie's office or for an office for the fiscal officer's position.  There has been carping and complaining about Marie not having office hours, in spite of how much time she spends on the township business--with all that time, if the township computer and records are at the school, where do you think she would be?  She would probably spend more time in her office in the school than the trustees would, excpet for Vic, who is kind of a captive audience.
Science is built on hairsplitting, and so are budgets, but I think the overarching thing is not that it is Marie's office or John Vechery's office, but that this is to house the position.  

Cal Brant:  I was wondering why the Trustees feel that we have an asset that we should not be using to bring in funding to offset the costs of the building.
Jason:  Where did you get that idea?

Cal:  You keep coming up with reasons not to move forward with it.

Jason:  I think you misinterpreted that.  

Cal:  The fact that we are not occupying that building means that we are not able to apply for money grants.  As far as wanting to have the whole building ready, I do not understand why you want to do it that way.  The constant procrastination here is not creating any community enthusiasm at all, and I think part of the role of the trustees is to foster the community support.

Jason:  I inherited this project.  [When Jason was campaigning, his brochure said that he was accountable.]

If you got here early enough to pick up an agenda or hear what has been said . . . .[Blogger:  Even if Cal had  gotten to the meeting on time, if he had been last in line, he would still not have been able to get an agenda.  There were very few, and they went fast.]

Jason:  I have action items we need to address.

Sue Skrovan:  I hope the trustees will realize what we have in that building.  I work for a government office now.  They bought the old fire station from the Township, which gave us money for our building.  In the old [Village office] building, the police were in the basement and the clerk and assistant clerk had little better than closets.  Council was in the same area.  Zoning was in there also.  The new (fire station) building was renovated.  They had to get out of the original building because the roof was separating from the walls by 6 inches.  The new building has no storage and no basement.  We have file boxes already under our desks.  The only place to store records is on a mezzanine or in a bay in the service garage.  We have this building that is just a pure gem that can be a model for all of northeastern Portage County.  We have the room--we just need to be creative.

John Festa:  The village is in its predicament because of poor planning and making rash decisions.

Sue:  I don't think we [the Township] have made  rash decisions.

John Festa:  We are going to take our time and do it right.

Sue:  We have taken time.  [Blogger:  There was more, but you get the idea.]

Roger Hurd:  Pat mentioned the 1970's.  A lot of people spent many hours at the Civic Center.  I was one.  Sometimes there were too many and some had to be asked to leave.  The church, Farm Bureau, LCA, and a number of other organizations contributed more than the trustees did.  We can see that it [the Civic Center] is probably a lot like this--if a match were put to it it would go up in a flash.  The Civic Center is a lot better than it was.  I heard through the grapevine that the stage [could] be torn out and offices put there.  Doing that would render the building useless and prevent any access to the basement except through the outside.

This building [the Township Hall] is a tinderbox.

The bond issue:  It would probably go down to defeat because people are voting against bond issues and levies.  Someone will say it went down to defeat because no one wanted the Center school.  A bond issue could be used as a referendum but not a legitimate one.

If it is the intent to tear down the school, do it and suffer the consequences because they will be severe.

John Festa:  [I think we need to] consider all options.
Roger:  A bond issue?
John Festa:  Just a consideration.

Roger:  A bond issue?  You need a building that is fire safe, water safe, and secure from forced entry from the outside.  It is accessible to all people.  I do not see any common sense approach [here].

Carol Srajer:  The school or the annex or whatever is the center of our township and as it is now, if you want to do something with the clerk, you have to know where she lives.  If you want to know about building something, you have to find out where that person lives.

For me, I would like to see all of our government in one place.  Since the Board of Elections is using our building--this building here is a tinderbox.  Maybe we should be having our meetings there [in the School].  Everyone would know that if you have a government issue, that is where you go.  If you are new to the area, your neighbor knows where the school is.

Is it realistic to think that the whole floor can be done at one time?  Get one [room] done and learn what the issues are and be wiser about the rest of them and find people to help.  I understand looking 1, 5, and 10 years ahead--but we need to get something done.

Carole Pollard:  Jason, "piecemeal" is just a derogatory word for phases.  If you to one room at a time and do them nicely, people will get excited about [how] we are making progress.  You can put up signage in the building saying what we have done.

Jason, no matter what you do, all of you sitting there are targets.  No matter what you do, someone will say you just screwed up--no matter what you do.  If you are frugal, someone will say, "Huh.  Damned cheapskates."  If you do it elegantly, someone will say,  "Look at the money they have wasted."  So you can't win by doing anything but the right thing, respecting the building and the legacy that has been left to us by your relatives, but that can be your legacy, too.

Reputations are established by people like Bernie Madoff and Russo and DeMauro [sp?].  A legacy was left by Teddy Roosevelt with the national parks, John Kennedy with the space program, and your uncle Jerry saving that building.  He said that it would have been cheaper to tear it down and start over.  A lot of us know your uncle from when he was a kid.  How he got to the point of saving that building and wanting to call it "The Willis H. Carlton Opportunity Center" is a matter of wonder to all of us--but bless his heart for doing it.  One way or another, you have a similar opportunity.

The [Center School] building is 75% paid off.  I didn't pull that out of my left ear--I talked to Marie.  There is a long, long list of everything that has been done in that building and most of it is not visible, but it is infrastructure and crucial to the continued viability of the building for the next 100 years.  It doesn't show, so the trustees who worked on that have been beaten up regularly.  To stop now, sell the building, or level it and try to start over--a new building with has a 35-50 year life expectancy.  To produce the same number of square footage in a conventionally constructed building would cost $170 per square foot.  That comes out to about $2.5 million just for the building and it would blow down in a tornado.

In Joplin, Missouri, last year, the oldest buildings were not damaged, or only minimally so.  They were still standing.  If the storm had occurred during the week, every kid in that school would have died.  The school was reduced to matchsticks.
 
It has been said that kites fly highest against the wind.  Winston Churchill said that.  A difficult, worthy thing makes us grow.  This building would do that..            

Vic:  One other thing about the building.  We purchased the building in 2004.  Final (blue?) prints were not available until 2006.  It was a different building department [then] and that was why we split the building into three sections so we could work in phases on it.  We began in the Education section because it was the hardest.  There was never a definition for Assembly before.  In a meeting with the architect there was finally agreement that it would be assembly [the gymnasium/annex].  Then we had the prints made out and we got a cost analysis and we beat every one of them.

The parking area was estimated at $40,000, but we did it for $28,000.  We bid everything and we tested everything and it [testing for hazardous materials] came back negative.  We have been doing it in phases and we did a lot of it ourselves with the road crew and the trustees and we took the time to do it on our schedule according to the best cost savings at the time. 

The idea was not to make money but to offset costs.  That is why we wanted to stay with non-profit oncwe we began renting it and making too much money, and we would have to pay taxes.      

Blogger:  One more post should do it.  It has been a month since this meeting, and I had forgotten the specifics.  A lot got said--both by residents and by the trustees--that people should know.  In my view, Jason and John Festa are getting right to the edge of wearing out the fine-sounding phrases.  And looking ahead 10 years should not take 10 years in the looking.  One more thing:  Before the 2011 election, the criticism heaped on Vic and Mark was that it had all taken too long.  Now, suddenly, we really need to take our time, and John Festa, who is the one beating that drum the most, has gotten absolutely no criticism for it from the same person who regularly bullied Vic and Mark.  Who was that, you might ask?  Larry Leitzow.