Town Hall Roof Repair Behind Schedule by at Least a Month

Fairly technical and time consuming. That's how Glenn Dodge, the person overseeing the Town Hall roof repair project explained the work being done to the building.

That's partly why Dodge said Monday night that there is no way the project is going to be done by the originally anticipated date.

"It was originally planned to finish by the end of October," Dodge said. "That's not going to happen."

Dodge said a soft start to the project, combined with a bottleneck in the work being done at the beginning of the project, likely means the repairs won't be done until the end of November at the earliest, Dodge told the Selectmen.

The Town Hall has been closed since the end of July, but work didn't start in earnest until closer to the end of August, Dodge said.

In retrospect, looking at the enormity of the project and the length of time it took to get the project started, with setting up staging, jacking up the roof and opening the eves, the end of October should never had been given as a projected completion date, Dodge said.

He said Turnstone Corp., the company running the repairs, recently shared a plan that would put them into late December, but he's hopeful it can be done by the end of November, and hopefully before the snow starts flying in New Hampshire.

"This job is very detail-oriented, very difficult to do," Dodge said while flipping through a slideshow of photos that show significant damage to some of the rafters, mortises and trusses.

The good news is, so far there haven't been a lot of surprises, Dodge said, though they did find some troubling things. 

A rafter that was essentially holding up the building, Dodge said, was pushing so hard against the brick chimney that the chimney has bowed in. Failing rafters have put so much stress on the mortise and tendon joints that some of the mortises have been sheared off, he added. 

These rafters that should be able to hold 20,000 to 25,000 pounds can barely hold themselves up, Dodge said, showing the board an example of one badly damaged beam that was discovered during the project, this one right over the office of Town Administrator Jim O'Mara.

Some beams looked fine on the outside, he said, but a quick drill test into the middle found the beams were harboring a secret of wood rotted by water damage in the center, Dodge said.

He said they also found some troubling previous repair work on a section of flat roof that was repaired sometime in the late '90s. The pitched roof that should come down to meet the flat roof stops short, as can be seen in a picture, meaning the interior of the roof in that area has been exposed to the elements for years. There is surprisingly little damage there compared to what could have been found, Dodge said.

All told, right now the surprise beam replacements that were found Dodge estimated to cost about $5,000 to $10,000, however, according to Selectman Chairman Dwight Brew, the bid came in about $8,000 under the $287,000 allotted for repairs by the town during Town Meeting, so they have at least that for any overage costs.

Asked of the likelihood of more unexpected work, Dodge said he did not foresee there being other surprises.

Selectman John D'Angelo said the way he saw it, there was some major project management failure at the beginning of this project that set it off course right at the outset. He said it didn't appear the end of October timeline was ever taken seriously on the part of Turnstone.

D'Angelo pressed Dodge to let Turnstone know that the sooner this project can be finished, the better for all involved, Turnstone included, as they are the ones running the risk of heading into winter and having to work in the snow. 

In the meantime, O'Mara said there is no expiration date on the two locations in town that the Town Hall staff has moved into during the renovations, so a longer repair time won't mean offices being forced to move again.

The Town Clerk, Community Development Office, and Tax Collection and Assessing offices have all been relocated to the Amherst Fire Department. The Town Administrator, Executive Assistant/Welfare Officer and Finance Director are all in temporary residence at the Amherst Middle School. 

This was done to save the town the money that would be associated with renting space during the repairs, Brew told Patch over the summer.The structural deficiencies with the roof were discovered last November and residents approved repairs at Town Meeting to the tune of more than $287,000. In July, the Board of Selectmen awarded the job to Turnstone Corp., who submitted a project proposal of $279,000.