Floyd County seeks way to beat heat with courthouse’s new HVAC system not complete

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

For many years, the way the Floyd County courthouse dealt with summer heat was with a large collection of individual window air conditioners, poking out of a majority of the windows in the building.

Those window AC units are gone now, part of the process of replacing all the windows in the structure and of tying the courthouse into the new heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system that was installed as part of the attached county law enforcement center.

The problem is, the courthouse part of the new HVAC system isn’t finished and the outdoor temperatures are currently in the 90s.

“Offices reported like 84 degrees last week,” said County Auditor Gloria Carr.

The county Board of Supervisors and representatives of The Samuels Group, the county’s construction manager for the law enforcement center and courthouse update project, discussed an option Monday morning that will require installing temporary filters and thermostats to get the AC working on at least some of the floors.

“It shouldn’t be an issue getting it going, especially for second floor,” said Samuels Group Project Manager Jason McLendon, who said it will likely be done this week.

“With third and fourth (floors) still under construction we may look at some options there, but for now, we think if we get first and second going that will take care of the humidity issues in the building, which is my bigger concern right now as it gets hotter,” he said.

“We’ll put together a maintenance schedule as far as visual inspections on those filters for when they need to be changed out and get that on a rotation until we’re fully turned over. That way no dust and debris is getting back to the brand-new units,” he said.

McLendon said one impact of starting to use the courthouse parts of the HVAC system now is it will start the warranty running on the units.

“We’ll have to provide the manufacturer a letter stating we started the equipment on this date,” McLendon said.

Also at the meeting Monday morning, the Board of Supervisors discussed county employee pay rates for the new fiscal year which will begin July 1 and approved all department wage rates except for conservation, engineering, treasurer and child support recovery.

Several county departments had submitted pay rates that showed greater than the 5% pay increases that had been approved by the supervisors during budget time, with some of those having been previously approved by the board and others raising questions.

The supervisors eventually veered into a more general discussion on how wages paid in one department impact wages in other departments, salaries versus hourly wages, departments that have their own boards that set pay rates and even how many work hours are in specific fiscal years.

Supervisor Roy Schwickerath said he was in favor of keeping the increases at 5% unless they had previously agreed to some different amount.

Auditor Carr said, “The fairest thing would truly be to have a wage study done and not just looking at wages of other counties, but looking at actual duties that are done in the offices.”

The supervisors noted that they are all retiring at the end of this year and a brand new board will take office in January, because this is the first year with new supervisor districts, and so they shouldn’t hand a wage study off to a new board.

“Yeah, I don’t know that now’s the time,” said Supervisor Linda Tjaden. “I think that’s the direction that should happen, but that’s going to be somebody else’s decision.”

Carr said, “I do think if you did a wage study I think you’d be surprised that our wages are not competitive for the duties that people are doing – in some of the offices.”

Supervisor Doug Kamm said, “Every time we talk about wages we get to the same place. This one makes higher, this one should make more, this one should. …”

“A wage survey would address that,” Carr said.

The supervisors also:

• Appointed Beverly Fisher to another five-year term on the Conservation Board.

• Appointed Tim Speas and Gary Quint to additional three-year terms on the Veterans Affairs Commission.

• Discussed Secondary Road Department updates with County Engineer Jacob Page, noting that the new 180th Street bridge is now open, and congratulating Page on receiving his professional engineer license, now making him officially able to do all the duties of the office including signing contracts and agreements with the Iowa Department of Transportation.

When Page was hired he had an engineering degree and four years of experience as an engineer, but did not yet have his professional engineer (PE) license, as is required by the state for county engineers. When he began the Job March 1 it was contingent on him earning his PE certification within six months.