NORTHAMPTON — Frustration over long delays for minor repairs led library officials to hire outside contractors, correspondence between Forbes Library and City Hall reveals.
Despite Mayor David J. Narkewicz’s request that Forbes Library use city resources for maintenance and repairs whenever possible, it has not always produced results for the library.
The lack of response has led the library to hire its own contractors at times, emails reviewed by the Gazette show. On the city’s end, that approach has caused headaches at City Hall about procurement, budgeting and how maintenance gets carried out at Forbes — all issues at the center of a lawsuit pitting the city against Forbes in Hampshire Probate and Family Court.
Narkewicz, says the maintenance matters are “symptomatic” of the problems that can occur when the city’s Central Services Department is not coordinating projects at Forbes like it does with every other city department, as well as the schools.
“I think it’s going back to having some protocols,” Narkewicz said. “It gets back to the whole issue of planning and procurement and planning for projects.”
But some of the smallest projects where Forbes Library employees have sought to use city resources have fallen through the cracks. What’s more, the problems date back years.
In an August 23, 2013, email to Narkewicz, Forbes Library Director Janet Moulding informed the mayor that after having put a work order in to Central Services for three minor electrical jobs on May 28, nothing had been done for nearly three months.
The jobs included getting a network connection cable installed for a new printer the library began leasing in May of that year, fixing a broken light on the second floor and getting rid of an extension cord in a public area that Moulding said was “a potential danger to the public.”
Moulding noted that she had sent an email to David Pomerantz, the director of Central Services, on July 12, asking when the library could expect the work to get done.
“He (Pomerantz) replied on July 15 that he would speak with the electrician and “make sure the work gets done.” I have heard nothing since,” Moulding wrote in her August 23 email to Narkewicz.
“Since we still do not have even an estimate of when the work might be done by the city electrician, I am going to go ahead and bring in an outside electrician,” Moulding told the mayor in her email. “I think with the printer situation alone, it has cost more money in staff time wasted and unnecessary lease expenditure than it would have to hire an electrician in the first place.”
Moulding said she decided to alert the mayor to the situation after reaching a dead end with the city. She explained in her email that she understood the mayor did not want to have maintenance bills presented to the city for payment “after the fact,” but that Forbes had tried unsuccessfully to use city resources.
“We had an extension cord stretched across our library for over two months,” Moulding said in a recent interview. “I sent an email to the mayor saying nothing is getting done. It’s a danger to the public and people can trip on it.”
Narkewicz, who handled questions for Central Services, said he investigated the matter after the Gazette inquired about it. He said he learned that a work order had been taken out for the electrical jobs and then was closed out several weeks later in the city’s work order system. He was not able to determine why it was closed out if work was still outstanding — a key employee involved no longer works for the city, he said.
“They get lots of work orders; they’re working in every city and school building,” the mayor said. “If there’s ever any miscommunication like that, we certainly want to address that.”
More recently, Forbes has been without a properly functioning fax machine for nearly half a year, after requesting a fix from Central Services in January of this year.
In a January 4 email to Pomerantz, Forbes Library Jason Pecten notified the Central Services Department that the library needed a new phone line for its new elevator because the current elevator phone was tied into its fax line. Pomerantz responded one minute later by email asking Pecten to call him and then Pecten wrote again to Pomerantz with a fuller explanation as to why a new phone line was needed.
The line has not been installed to date and the fax machine doesn’t pick up calls.
“Our fax machine has been broken for six months despite repeated requests,” Moulding said. “That’s the kind of lack of service that makes us look elsewhere.”
“I know they (Central Services) are really busy and they have a lot to do, and I appreciate that, but we also need to do things in a timely manner and do it as efficiently as we can,” she added.
Narkewicz said he was not aware of the situation until a Gazette reporter brought it to his attention this week, but said the issue is a good example of what can happen when the city does not manage and coordinate projects at Forbes as was the case with the new elevator.
“A choice was made to say, ‘Let’s just tap into this line and it was the fax line,” Narkewicz said. “They were managing that project. Instead of putting in a separate line for the elevator, they tapped into an existing one.”
“It’s really related to the elevator issue, which is a whole other issue of project management,” he added.
The mayor said he’s encouraged Forbes to not only use Central Services to coordinate and handle projects at the library, but also to rely on the department for technical advice.
He said the request for installing a new phone line is pending and dependant on Verizon doing some work before an electrician can reroute phone lines at the library.
“I’m assuming it’s going to be at least a few weeks,” he said.
Staff Writer Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.