Temporary air conditioning fix scheduled for Richland County courthouse
Richland County officials are hoping warmer weather will not cause things to heat up in the county courthouse and administration building.
County commissioners voted at their meeting Tuesday to order new controls for the rooftop air chillers and a temporary air conditioning unit to keep things cool inside the building until repairs are made.
County Maintenance Supervisor Josh Hicks told the board the cooling system is not working because the controls on the 10-year-old system are out of date.
“Basically it’s the computer in it. It’s running off Windows XP (which is no longer serviced),” he said, noting that several local companies looked at the problem but were not able to service it.
Commissioners approved a $19,984 contract with SMARDT Incorporated of Ontario, Canada, for parts and labor for new controls and a $44,129 contract with Mobile Air & Power Rentals of Cleveland for a temporary mobile air conditioning unit. The board decided to bring in a mobile unit despite the expense because SMARDT cannot be on site to make the repairs until June 10 and because there are parts supply issues.
“When this first went down we were told that the Windows XP board was only several weeks out, and then after more than a week out they said it could be six to eight weeks out, which we knew wouldn’t be acceptable,” said Commissioner Tony Vero. “We have jury trials on the third floor, so this is a costly but necessary fix to resolve the issue immediately and we’re going to get the circuit board to fix the AC.”
Vero said Hicks and Commissioners' Chairman Darrell Banks have been working on what he described as a “long-term fix” for the next several years to correct a “design flaw” in the system.
“We’re going to look at ways to upgrade the system and have some redundancy so, if this ever happens again, we won’t be in this position,” he said. “It’s all part of the ongoing capital upgrades in this building.”
The mobile unit will be put in the building parking lot and temporarily connected to the existing air cooling system. Other temporary measures are being taken to keep the building as cool as possible until the unit is available.
“I’ve been kicking the outside air on at night and pulling in the cooler air, so it’s cool in the morning, and we’ve been trying to live with it all day,” Hicks said.
A number of offices also have purchased fans for the interim.
Asphalt contracts approved
Commissioners also met with County Engineer Adam Gove to award contracts for road patching and paving materials and to consider a temporary road closure.
The contracts with Mar-Zane Materials of Mansfield and Sarver Paving of Ashland are for material the county highway department uses to patch roads in the summer. Sarver’s bid was $75 per ton for surface asphalt and $66 per ton for base asphalt while Mar-Zane’s figures were $86 per ton for surface and $75 per ton for base asphalt.
Gove said he recommended two contracts, even though Sarver had the lower bid, because he tries to use Sarver when work is in the northern part of the county and Mar-Zane for everything around Mansfield and in the southern part of the county.
“By the time you add in the travel time — especially from Ashland to anywhere in the south part of the county — the cost of fuel, the cost of vehicles and also keeping the material hot to be able to put it down on the road is where we like to use them (Sarver)," he said.
Movie production to prompt road closing
Commissioners also approved a permit to temporarily close Richland Shale Road between Ohio 545 and Conard Road June 10, 11 and possibly 12 from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. to allow a production crew to film for a movie.
Gove said he put together a new road closure/special use permit form similar to what cities use for parades following a request from director Gary Jones of Hartland Horror Chronicles LLC of Crestline. He said about the only thing he knows is that the production will involve about 30 people filming a car scene.
“They’re not flipping anything over out there. I wanted to make sure they’re not going to be tossing cars down in the ditch or anything like that,” Gove told the board. “I asked them if they would be doing anything that would be damaging to anything in the right-of-way and they said ‘no,’ so they didn’t mention any kind of safety services that they would need.”
Gove said the company will be charged a $100 fee for the permit, which normally would be free, because the county highway department will provide closure barricades and move them daily. He noted the few residents on the road still will have access from Ohio 13 during the closure.
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Commissioners OK contracts for courthouse air conditioning, asphalt
