FAIRMONT– A work session was held on Tuesday afternoon to go over a facility conditions assessment report of the Law Enforcement Center (LEC) in Fairmont. Those present included the Martin County Board of Commissioners, representatives of the Martin County Sheriff’s Office, Fairmont Police Department, Department of Corrections and other county staff. The report was provided virtually from Tim Auringer of Oleson and Hobbie Architects.

At its March 17 meeting, the board had first reviewed the report and at that time was told it would cost $6.3 to $7.2 million to address the needs of the 52-year-old facility. Tuesday’s work session was set to discuss it further.

Auringer said his team has met with the buildings committee several times since and had some requested modifications.

He acknowledged that a previous facility conditions assessment was done on the facility by Wold Architects and Engineers several years ago when the county was looking at building a new LEC, but that Oleson and Hobbie was tasked with looking again to come up with a fresh assessment.

Auringer said they had a focus on the immediate or pressing issues that needed to be addressed, some of which have already been on the county’s list, too.

“The roof is an item that has reached its effective useful lifespan. We’ve got some roof leaks that Luke (Cyphers) and his team have tried to address and keep on top of,” Auringer said.

The said that the membrane roof system is approximately 30 years old, new in 1996.

He added that the exterior windows on the building, which are hollow metal frames and double-paned, are deteriorating and rusting. Those are original to the building, built in 1974.

“Overall the building is in pretty decent shape. It’s a solid building. It’s certainly a building that’s worth investing into,” Auringer said.

Moving on to some of the interior rooms, Auringer noted that the kitchen is outdated and said there are some options that can be looked at to improve the aesthetics.

Some mechanical systems were also touched on. Auringer acknowledged that air handling units have been problematic overtime.

“Luke and his team have replaced those… some of you have probably experienced some conditioning issues over the years as some of those units are being replaced. That’s probably the biggest need I think of the building based upon the age and limited availability of replacement parts to some of this equipment,” Auringer said.

When it came time to covering costs, Auringer said that replacing the heating and cooling aspects would cause the cost of the project to go up dramatically.

Looking at 2026 costs with a 10 percent contingency, figures were still coming in at $6.3 to $7.2 million.

“Best case scenario, this is do everything all at once, one big project, for efficiency sake,” Auringer said of the amount.

However he said that the building committee had asked to look at some inflated costs should the project be done in phases.

The potential first phase of the project, which was originally expected to be low impact, would include reroofing the building, replacing windows throughout the building, replacing the access control system (which is currently underway) and replacing all rooftop AC compressors and HVAC system upgrades including replacement of roof-mounted compressor/condenser unit and cooling coils in air handling units 1 and 2 in the mezzanine space.

Phase two would include handrail and guardrail replacement, kitchen renovations and water heater replacement and phase three would include other HVAC system upgrades including air handling units, compressor and condenser units, plumbing upgrades, electrical system upgrades, light fixture replacement, insulation of exterior walls and accessibility items.

After going through some details, Auringer told those present, “A project of this nature would disrupt basically the entire group of you working in the building as those air handling units would be pulled offline. We would lose heating and cooling in different sections of the building. This project could be phased out over time to maybe do a floor over time.”

He added that there have been some concerns over security and safety when it comes to the project.

Commissioner Jaime Bleess asked the group to focus on phase one first and how much disruption it would cause to the emergency operations specifically.

Auringer said included in phase one is reroofing the building and he said it shouldn’t cause too much disruption for staff in the building, except for if air conditioner replacement is part of that project.

“For reroofing itself, generally no one should have much knowledge that is anything is going on apart from having equipment in the parking lot,” he said.

He said it would take about two weeks to a month and that reroofing could be done in a cooler month, like September, so that cooling wouldn’t be much of an issue.

Bleess asked for clarification that the AC system in the jail is in a different area and wouldn’t be affected and Auringer said that was his understanding. However, Cyphers said that his understanding was that if the roof is redone, cooling would be lost to the jail and dispatch.

He added that he obtained some blueprints that showed which air handling units served which part of the building.

“If we do the roof, there will be down time… jail and dispatch would be down if my blueprints are correct,” Cyphers said.

Commissioner Richard Koons said he thought that was looked into and that the jail wouldn’t be affected and Cyphers said he has heard both ways but that’s what his blueprints were showing.

“I agree, at our prior meeting before this, we were lead to believe otherwise,” said Bleess.

Auringer said the discovery of the blueprints was new information and would alter what the board was first told at its March 17 meeting.

“So the question then, is how do we mitigate that time element of disconnecting the AC compressor on the roof when they’re doing the roof repair. How do we mitigate the amount of time it would be impacting the jail,” Auringer said.

Cyphers shared that when the Health and Human Services roof was redone, the air handling units were down for two weeks and then there were some programming issues that caused about three weeks of down time.

“I would say three weeks at the worst, two weeks if everything goes well,” Cyphers said.

Commissioner Kevin Kristenson asked what staff did during that time. Cyphers said that that staff was capable of working from home so that option was utilized.

“It’s a completely different situation with what we’re doing here with courts and jail and dispatch that don’t have the option to work off-site,” Cyphers said.

Martin County Jail Administrator, Tanya Rathman, said that there are Department of Correction guidelines for inmates in the jail and that temperatures have to be between 65 and 71 in the winter months and between 68 and 76 in the summer months.

“If we exceed those temperatures I have to house my inmates out,” Rathman said.

Cyphers said that the heating is run by the boiler so if it got really cold during the time the roof is being redone, it would be ideal. Bleess asked why they’re considering September as the month to do the work as it could be warm out still, but it was said that if it’s too cold there would be other challenges to reroofing.

There was some discussion about using portable cooling units during the project, which Auringer said was a possibility.

Commissioner Joe Loughmiller asked the sheriff’s office and police department how they would manage a 30 day period without AC.

Fairmont Police Chief Mike Beletti said most of his staff is on the lower level so that it wouldn’t be an issue for them. Chief Deputy Corey Klanderud said they could adjust but he would recommend looking into a short-term cooling unit.

“From what I’m hearing, if this is the direction the board wants to go, I’m inclined to say let’s do phase one and phase two. We have the the USDA grant that can pay for the vast majority of it, and avoid doing phase three until we have to or until there’s more clarity on what the long-term approach to the LEC is,” Loughmiller said.

He was referring to a previous grant that the county had received to design and build a new LEC, but had recently redirected to use the funds to address needs of the current facility.

Koons said he didn’t fully agree with tackling phase one and two first. He said there would be a cost savings to doing everything all at once and that they could use the phases as stages to do it.

“To say, let’s only do phase one and phase two when we know we need phase three eventually, personally I think we just…,” Koons said.

Loughmiller said he agreed it could be through through more but that he was ready to sign off on phase one and phase two.

After more than an hour in conversation, Kristenson wrapped up the meeting. As it was a work session and no decisions could be made, he suggested anyone with other ideas or questions contact members of the building committee.