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Belleair Beach City Council looking for meeting place
By DAVE SHELTON
Article published on Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007 |
BELLEAIR BEACH – When the wrecking ball falls on City Hall next year, it may leave the city with no place to conduct public meetings.
City Manager Nancy McCollum said she is talking to two neighboring municipalities to determine if they have facilities the City Council and advisory boards can use until a new City Hall has been erected, probably not until 2010.
Councilman Rob Baldwin, head of a special committee overseeing the project to replace the 50-year-old municipal complex, said he is seeing progress. Earlier this year several elected officials expressed frustration at how slow the project appeared to be going.
Originally budgeted at $3 million, plans were stalled last year when the city’s architect said that because of rising construction costs, the new complex might cost nearly $5 million. The city council put the project on hold.
Then, voters elected to disband the city’s seven-officer police department. Without a need to house a police department, plans for the new city hall were pared down. That’s when Baldwin’s committee was appointed by Mayor Lynn Rives and Baldwin started looking for other ways to cut the project’s costs.
Besides less office space, Baldwin then reported that if the building were moved to another spot on the city’s Causeway Boulevard property, the building could be erected without pilings, which significantly reduced the projected cost.
But, where to put the new building and what to do with the public works building slowed things down a bit, he said. Nearby residents didn’t want a new public works building near their homes on Cedar Drive.
If the new building were to be built near the existing city hall, the building would have to be torn down first, leaving the city without any place for its offices and meetings during construction. It is estimated construction could last for two years.
After some arguments during the construction committee meetings, it was decided the new building would be erected just west of the existing structure. Offices will be moved into a city-owned house adjacent to the city hall property. But that leaves no meeting room, Rives said at the council’s Nov. 5 meeting.
There are no large meeting facilities within the city. And, McCollum added, the city records its meetings for re-broadcast on a cable TV. This requires sound and video recording and editing equipment in the meeting room.
McCollum said she is looking at facilities in neighboring Indian Rocks Beach and Belleair Bluffs. Belleair Shore has used meeting facilities in Belleair Bluffs for nearly 10 years.
In related action, the council approved a bookkeeping change that set up a city bank account specifically for the municipal complex project. The city has had the $3 million borrowed from a local bank for nearly two years but the money was held in a general fund account.
City Finance Officer Maria Kemp explained this was a bookkeeping change that would make keeping track of expenses on the new complex easier to track.
Baldwin said the next step toward groundbreaking will be seeking a general contractor. He said the city must also hire a firm that specializes in asbestos removal as some has been discovered in the building that is to be torn down. He said the asbestos would have to be removed before the demolition began.
City Hall has numerous problems including water damage, pest infestation and it no longer meets Florida building codes, according to officials.
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Article published on Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007
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