A Stormer on the horizon
Council member Dave Stormer has developed an alternative to the $1.4 million construction proposed by Mayor Carl Beckmann for the Public Safety Department. How do the two plans stack up?
Council member Dave Stormer has developed an alternative to the $1.4 million construction proposed by Mayor Carl Beckmann for the Public Safety Department. How do the two plans stack up?
By Ali Akhyari
Folly Beach, SC
The project has been called Mayor Carl Beckmann’s legacy. Like a mirage in the desert, you can see the new $1.4 million Public Safety Expansion beginning to take shape after nearly a year of planning and discussion.
On same horizon, however, Council member Dave Stormer has been casting foreboding clouds that threaten the building’s future. No one on the City Council has been more vocal and opposed to the expansion than Stormer, who has called for more cost effective alternatives and engaged in various debates on the matter. Most recently, Stormer has presented a new alternative, even though the City has already begun the bidding process for the current plan; a plan which was agreed to by the entire City Council, including Stormer.
“I don’t like alternatives in the eleventh hour unless their really good,” Beckmann says, who is adamantly opposed to Stormer’s alternative. The City, he says, has spent a lot of money with an architect on the plans and has discussed other options for about a year.
There is no argument, though, that more space is needed and that the 1997 design of the Public Safty building wastes a lot of valuable space. Mayor Beckmann says the expansion is simply finishing the original project which was started in 1997 and had to be stopped when the City ran out of money. However, the new construction is not a legacy, he says, but an attempt to give the people who work within its walls the space they deserve, as well as to get the buildings up to code. Stormer says you can do the same thing for a fraction of the cost.
Stormer says he was only recently able to acquire a scale drawing of the current building design because the City had actually lost its copy, making his “eleventh hour” proposal unavoidable. According to Stormer’s examination of the drawings and his consideration of stairwells, elevators and hallways; less than half of the building’s square footage is used for office space.
According to Stormer’s new alternative, the entire first floor of City Hall would be given over to Public Safety. The Public Works Department would be moved to the historic water plant and the top floor would be remodeled to take advantage of wasted space. He estimates the remodeling to cost $60-$80 per square foot versus the $200 per square foot construction of the Public Safety expansion. If all of the space in City Hall were remodeled, the total cost would be about $614,000. A better figure might be around $500,000 remodeling 7000 square feet as the entire building space would not be remodeled since things like elevators and stairwells would most likely remain.
Both plans will result in the remodeling of City Hall so that it will use space more efficiently. Currently, the City is violating its own codes by having a bunk room for fire personnel and a kitchen in the fire department on the ground floor (the only floor) because of flood elevation requirements. Both plans could accommodate this issue as well.
So, if both plans meet the same end, what is wrong with saving some money in the process? The difference lies in a few key issues.
One big issue is with the proposed utilization of the water plant. Mayor Beckmann says that using the old water plant is not a simple remodeling job, which is in line with Stormer’s estimate. Because the plant still has huge boilers and equipment installed in the building, it would require nearly $500,000 just to make it usable; an amount which would hypothetically take Stormer’s alternative to the million dollar level if the estimation is accurate. Furthermore, as a retired army man, Mayor Beckmann says that it is never a good idea to split your headquarters and that doing so would create too many extra costs and inconveniences.
“It doesn’t work in the military and it doesn’t work in municipal government,” Beckmann says.
Mayor Beckmann adds that Stormer’s suggestion is a “band-aid” approach from someone who is not forced to use the building on a daily basis and is not looking at the reality of the situation. Stormer points out that some headaches are self-induced. For example, he says that using valuable storage space for a Christmas tree is wasteful and that many seasonal and infrequently used items could be stored in an off-site location, freeing up areas that could be better utilized by City Hall staff.
However, there are some aspects of Mayor Beckmann’s proposal that simply can not be duplicated in Stormer’s plan. The City has three functional fire engines, but only got credit for two during a recent ISO inspection: a rating which directly affects home-owners insurance rates. The reason was that there was no place to store the third fire engine and a fire engine has to be protected by a heated, enclosed area in order to receive credit. That protection prolongs the life of the vehicle and helps to ensure its proper function. Stormer questions the actual impact this single option would have on the City’s ISO rating and home-owners insurance rates.
Stormer points out that the debt service on the current City Hall costs residents approximately $42.50 per year through the Water/Sewer Department, which pays the bill on behalf of Folly Beach customers with PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) money. That building is about to be paid off, which would mean residents could possibly save that much money each year through adjustments in their water billing. However, it is quite possible that the alternative could cost upwards of $1 million as well, and the money will come from taxpayers one way or another. Mayor Beckmann says that residents would see virtually no change in their payments with the expansion.
According to the estimates provided here, the costs of the two options would be virtually the same. However, the construction would benefit the City with an enhanced Fire Department which properly protects all of its equipment. The Council is scheduled to meet on July 28 and will hopefully discuss the matter then. If so, residents should be able to get a firmer grasp on some of these cost estimates.
To see Council member Dave Stormer’s plan in his own words, visit our website at: www.follycurrent.com. Keywords “Stormer alternative”.
