WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik will submit a $17 million bond request to the City Council tomorrow night for additional repairs to municipal buildings.
That funding request will be the subject of discussion tonight between members of the council’s Finance Committee and the Legislative & Ordinance Committee. The two committees will conduct a joint session at 6:30 p.m. in Room 201 of City Hall.
The bond request is related to a Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) Green Energy Grant to replace boilers in five school buildings and to replace the roof and windows of the Westfield Vocational Technical High School. The purpose of the Green Energy program is to reduce energy consumption by replacing antiquated boilers and by upgrading the exterior envelope of school buildings.
The council approved a $12 million bond for that green energy project last fall. The MSBA will reimburse the city at a 62 percent rate for that work.
The city has retained the services of three firms, two related to the MSBA Green Energy project and the third hired to perform an energy audit of all municipal buildings. Tighe & Bond of Westfield was hired to perform the Green Energy program engineering, while Professional Project Partners, Inc. (P3) was hired to serve as the owner’s project manager, a requirement of state grant-programs.
The city hired Siemens USA to conduct a comprehensive energy audit of the city’s building inventory. The purpose of that energy audit is to assist the city in setting priorities for investment in upgrading buildings to cut energy consumption and costs.
Knapik said this morning that the three firms have collaborated on the Green Energy project for the School Department and have recommended that the scope of work be expanded beyond what is approved through the MSBA program. The MSBA grant is limited in scope and cannot be used for ancillary work.
Siemens has recommended that the steam heat system be replaced with a hot water system because it takes far less energy to heat water to 140 degrees than to bring it to 212 degrees, the boiling point needed to turn water into steam. That effort will require an extensive construction effort.
The boilers being installed under the MSBA Green Energy program, at Westfield High School, Westfield Vocational Technical High School, Paper Mill, Highland and Southampton Road elementary schools can be programmed to heat the water to 140 degrees.
The problem is that the MSBA grant will not fund the work to replace the piping system and the classroom heating and ventilation systems. Nor can the MSBA grant be used for asbestos mitigation as the old pipes are removed and the new piping system installed.
“We just opened the bid for the boilers yesterday (Tuesday) and they came in $900,000 below the projected cost,” Knapik said. “All of the subcontractor bids, for roofs and windows are being opened today, but we won’t know the entire cost of the project until around March 8, so there is still a fair amount of information we do not have yet.”
“I’m submitting the bond request Thursday and it will be referred to committee, so we’ll know more about the final numbers before the council’s next meeting (on March 15),” he said. “A million dollars of this request is just to repair brick damage at the Voc-Tech school because water leaked off the roof and got behind the brick. We have problems like that all over the city because we didn’t take care of roofs. We’re in a tough Catch 22 situation where we have to make a significant investment so we can move forward.”
