Draft/Memo/Fire Station 62 DeficienciesMemo for the Facility Plans file of Fred Leistiko.
Subject: Fire Station 62 deficiencies
After conducting an onsite inspection of FS-62, I have made the following observations:
• There are enough deficiencies within FS-62 to ask the question, "Why was this facility
accepted into the City's inventory of operational facilities?"
• It is obvious that a punch list was not completed on this facility, as evidenced by the
deficiencies found during the recent inspection. (See Inspectors Report of 5/6/2010
Safety Inspection)
• Certain functions were designed into the facility that are not being utilized at this time
due to the fact the facility does not lend itself to those functions, i.e., $900,000 was put
into a training tower that was supposed to support water training, but the light fixtures are
not water tight, the drain will not take the water flow, the upper glass door blows open in
a high wind. This addition is totally un-usable and should not have been accepted
without a function check.
• The second floor training room is used as a storage area for junk because it has no other
function. This is a total waste of valuable space.
• The mechanical equipment room has equipment that is shut down (furnace) because it
has no function. There should have been a central mechanical equipment room. The
water supply system is in a separate room form other equipment. There are furnaces in a
couple locations.
• The mechanical room that contains the air conditioning system has a stench of stale sewer
water and it escapes to several other working rooms down the hall. It makes the reports
room almost un-usable. Firefighters say they are use to the smell, but as a visitor, I found
it extremely sickening.
• There are gaps under the doors large enough for rodents to come into the building. This
would be a disaster if they started to chew on fire hoses.
• The workmanship of the roofing system is totally unsatisfactory. There is metal fascia
that has blown off, there is rib caps that have blown off that will allow water to come in
and destroy interior structures.
• There is laminate/formica that is coming apart in the kitchen and training room.
The city should have a construction & maintenance department that oversees the building and
construction of facilities for the city. Currently this process is decentralized to the departments
involved. It should be centralized along with the routine maintenance and janitorial services.
Every department buys their own janitorial supplies, changes their own light bulbs and some
even cut their own grass, and some departments change the oil and lube their own vehicles.
Some time should be taken to organize the construction, maintenance, and upkeep of the
facilities that belong to the city. Supplies could be warehoused, deliveries made to a central
location and then delivered to the appropriate department, schedules arranged for inspection of
lavatories, lighting, furnaces, water -softeners, carpet cleaning, repairs, and maintenance. The
maintenance of all city owned facilities should fall under a responsible department. Janitorial
services could fall under that same department. Repairs could be done with in house
maintenance personnel or if they are major, assigned to an appropriate organization.
Each department would be connected into a central housekeeping computer where deficiencies
could be reported daily and tracked until they are corrected.
Each department would pay a small portion of their budget to maintain the service department.
The General Fund would have to fund projects that exceed a certain level. Major renovation or
construction projects would be funded by the department, but the actual supervision and work
would be handled by the Maintenance & Service Department.