Taxpayers Approve Updates to Hall Memorial Library

The engineering and design work for the new heating and air conditioning system at Hall Memorial Library is underway.

At a special town meeting held on Feb. 28, taxpayers approved spending up to $430,000 to overhaul the library’s HVAC system, including removing an existing, 20-year-old oil tank buried on the grounds and converting the library to a natural gas fed unit.

With the warmer weather a mere few months away, library Director Susan J. Phillips said the decision couldn’t have come at a better time.

The decision to borrow money to fund the project was not unanimous, however. During the special town meeting several residents expressed concern about the project, the timing and the necessity, according to minutes and a tape recording of the meeting. They asked whether it could be repaired instead of replaced and whether the project would go out to bid. (The construction portion of the project will go out to bid, but selectmen later that night waived the bidding process for the engineering and design work and awarded the $34,000 preliminary work contract to Russell & Dawson Architectural & Engineering, a firm that has been working with the library for months.)

One resident with experience with HVAC units said that there is a chance the project will not be done in time for the summer season, according to the meeting minutes of the special town meeting.

Town officials insisted that the timing is right for the project and that it would not be money wasted.

Finance Officer and Treasurer Nicholas J. DiCorleto, Jr., said Friday that the “new” addition to the library is nearly 20 years old – a groundbreaking ceremony for the addition was held in April 1991 – and the town is now dealing with maintenance issues.

Regarding the natural gas hook-up, First Selectman Maurice Blanchette said it will be less expensive to have the gas piped to the library and a high efficiency furnance installed than to continue to burn oil and risk the unground tank rupturing. The tank was tested last year and passed inspection, but officials remain concerned about its future because of its age.

On Friday, Phillips said, “We do not waste money here. We have always tried to be part of the solution here, not part of the problem.” She said that although the system has been properly maintained over time it has gotten warn out.  

It’s been nearly two years since the library has had a fully functional heating and cooling system, Phillips said from her office on Friday.

In 2008 she found out that the manufacturer of the unit’s control system stopped making replacement parts. Library officials had intended to ask for funding to upgrade the system through the municipal capital improvement process, but each time they were ready to submit the request the timing just wasn’t right, Phillips said.

So they waited. Then in 2009, at the end of the summer, one of the rooftop air conditioning compressors died. During the spring of 2010 library officials began researching what could be done and whether the second, and final compressor could make it through the summer. They got their answer that July when the second compressor quit working. They were able to revive it for another three months before it finally stopped working in September 2010, Phillips said.

There was now a very real potential that the building that requires the cool air not only because of the computers, historical materials and patrons, but also because it is the town’s designated cooling station, would not have air conditioning for the summer of 2011.

As library officials grappled with what to do, across the green, town officials had their own problems. More than one year ago, a roughly 20-year-old oil tank buried on the Town Hall property had sprung a leak. It needed to be removed and at that time officials chose to upgrade the building’s heating and air conditioning system to one fed by natural gas from the new Yankee Gas line that runs along the front of the town hall property.

With the potential for the library to be in a similar situation, and the fact that its HVAC unit had quit working, officials decided to expedite the project and asked residents to approve the funding the entire overhaul as part of a larger bonding package approved last week. Other items approved by taxpayers include $70,000 to round out the school building projects and $355,000 to purchase property next to the Crystal Lake School to expand the educational facility.