Title
Council Chambers Renovations
Purpose
PURPOSE/BACKGROUND:
We have lost two chairs in the citizen seating area in Council Chambers and others have been coming loose. Additionally, at the September 28, 2016, Council Meeting, a person attending the meeting reported that the chair they were sitting in damaged their clothes. Staff began exploring costs for fixing the citizen seating and making some other improvements to improve the safety and functionality of Council Chambers this summer. The scope of the project that staff has been exploring would be the minimum we would need and includes replacing the citizen seating, carpet and the half walls between the citizen seating and the Council dais, installing a false floor between the citizen seating and Council dais to run the cords under it that are currently taped to the floor and install a more functional station for the Clerk and her staff. The project would also replace the lattice work lighting in the Chambers to improve the efficiency of maintaining the lights.
Impact:
The total cost of the project is $300,000 and we recommend using Departmental Savings accumulated during the recession to cover this cost. This action would not impact our plan to reinstitute the Departmental Savings Program in FY17 as was discussed during the budget deliberations. Of course, additional improvements are needed in the Council chambers, particularly improving the information technology systems and presentation experience, but plan to use other sources of funds to cover the IT related items.
Recommendation:
Rec
Consider renovations of Council Chambers.