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Jun 01, 2023

Page County board holds off on courthouse boiler replacement

Page County Courthouse (Clarinda) -- Page County officials are holding off on

Page County Courthouse

(Clarinda) -- Page County officials are holding off on replacing the boilers at the county courthouse.

Meeting in regular session Thursday night, the Page County Board of Supervisors tabled action on the boiler replacement, which was expected to be financed by American Rescue Plan Act funds. Supervisors Chair Jacob Holmes says he feels more comfortable in holding off on placing a good chunk of dollars into the replacement efforts after touring the utility with representatives from Camblin Mechanical of Atlantic, who say the system, which includes two boilers, have a built-in fail-safe should one of them go down.

"What I understand is that it is a redundant system and if one does fail, it's redundant and one (boiler) can run the whole thing -- so we're not in a crisis here but it is something to look at and think about," said Holmes. "But, we've got roads chewed up everywhere and I'm of the opinion right now that we should put that money in more pressing issues."

The board heard a proposal from Siemens earlier this year, including nearly $171,000 to replace each boiler and a slightly higher cost for high-efficiency boilers. However, Holmes felt it would be worth installing an alarm in the basement to let the necessary people know if a rupture led to water leaking from the system.

"So we'd put in an alarm down there so if it's the weekend somebody would know if something broke -- I think it'd be wise because it could break any time," he said. "So, that would be my only thought that we should look into that and get that done in case we have a water break, then we would know, we can work on it, fix it, or buy (parts) or whatever."

However, Supervisor Judy Clark expressed some hesitancy as to whether ARPA dollars could go toward secondary roads. She added she wants the boilers to stay on the board's radar too.

"I don't want to totally eliminate the courthouse because I don't want (the boilers) to go bad either," said Clark. "The one possible problem is that if it quits all of a sudden and we can't get anything to replace it, then we're in trouble."

During a meeting in January, representatives with Siemens said talks of replacing the two boilers came after they had failed an inspection with the local fire department, mainly due to their age. The board agreed to clarify whether or not they could use COVID-19 relief dollars for roads before making a final decision either way. The supervisors also decided to have Siemens come back in front of the board to verify further the redundancy and current condition of the boilers.

In other business, the board approved the purchase of a triple axle belly dump trailer from ITM in Storm Lake for roughly $62,000 and signed the Rural Transit System Joint Participation Agreement with the Southwest Iowa Transit Agency.

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