A joint meeting of Town of Owego and Village of Owego officials and personnel, along with representatives from Clark Patterson Lee, an architecture and construction engineering firm based out of Binghamton, N.Y., was held on Wednesday, April 13 at the Town of Owego Town Hall.
The Town and Village of Owego have been working together, along with Clark Patterson Lee, on required needs for a shared municipal campus to be built in the current location of the Town Hall.
Eight other meetings have been held to date, which included an initial kick-off meeting held in October 2015. Clark Patterson Lee sourced information from officials and each department in order to narrow down elements and understand specific needs for the Town and Village. Department personnel were interviewed and items were discussed and considered within separate committees.
According to the proposal presented on April 13, the shared municipal building includes portions of the Town Utilities department, the Parks and Highway departments, as well as the Village DPW and Village code enforcement and records storage. The new municipal building would be built outside of the floodplain with shared areas and services wherever feasible. The project has a potential to ultimately reduce costs, including flood insurance, as well as increase overall efficiency.
The NY Rising Community Reconstruction (NYRCR) program, as part of the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery (GOSR) identified and finalized agreements with several Southern Tier municipal entities, with the Town of Owego as a sub-recipient, in partnership with the Village of Owego. The NYRCR empowers localities following impacts from Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.
Budget information discussed for the shared municipal building includes a maximum of $3 million from the Village and another $3 million from the Town, with any additional cost to be funded through the Town.
Clark Patterson Lee presented as many as four different scenarios for the shared services building with as much as a 34,000 square foot building including two-story designs. Separate vehicle bay allocations for the Town and Village, separate part storage allocations for the Town and Village, shared spaces such as meeting rooms and locker and break rooms, a Village code office separate from the Town code office, a joint welding and machine shop area, site circulation and entrances, as well as multiple other space recommendations were presented. Also on the table are other issues to consider moving forward, such as a shared phone system, on-site storage, and to review duplication of equipment and tools, among others.
Town and Village officials raised questions and concerns at the meeting, which in turn opened up some discussion on how the Town and Village can better support each other.
Village Trustee Earl Hartman raised concerns regarding logistics in certain circumstances, and also questioned specific design ideas presented by Clark Patterson Lee. Village Mayor, Steven May, raised a point about the use of buildings on the north side, and Jeff Soules of the Village DPW communicated concerns about the housing of all equipment on the town side.
Village and Town officials will review Clark Patterson Lee’s building program proposal further before the next scheduled meeting in May. Discussions and meetings will be ongoing.
Hartman shared, “This merger is more than coming to a common campus.”
Town of Owego Supervisor, Donald Castellucci commented, “The Town is open to review on this and is not closed to new ideas.”
