Oct. 25—OTTUMWA — It appears the window-replacement project at the Wapello County Courthouse will require a pair of contracts.
The county board of supervisors approved the use of A&J Associates, which the county has partnered with in the past, to oversee a future contract requiring windows that have asbestos to be replaced separately.
A second contract will be required because Christner Contracting Inc., which is doing a bulk of the work, is not certified to replace windows with asbestos. The approximately 110-window project is scheduled to take place next spring, when the asbestos contract will come before the supervisors.
“The problem we’re trying to work out right now is the coordination,” supervisor Jerry Parker said. “We’ve got one contractor to put in all new windows, another to take out all the windows except those that have asbestos. The windows won’t be ready until next spring.”
The need for a second contract came after initial samples found four of 15 windows with asbestos in the caulk. Because that met a 25% threshold, all the windows needed to be inspected. About 40 windows were found to have asbestos.
As a result, the contract with Christner will be reduced in terms of windows, while the future contract will have an increased number of windows for asbestos removal.
“We’d like to do one side of the courthouse at a time, and a lot of them are on the north side,” Parker said. “We don’t want to go to the auditor’s office and have the asbestos people take out all the windows and have plywood up until the contractor gets to it. That’s not the way to go.
“There may be a short time for a few days when you’re going from one office to another to have plywood over the window, but we don’t want to go months with it that way.”
In other business:
—Parker said a deal appears eminent to sell the former bioprocessing training facility near Eddyville to Cargill. The county has been working for more than a year to get it sold since Indian Hills Community College moved its bioprocessing program to its main campus.
“There is a need for it as a training facility,” he said. “I think it’s good that it will continue to be used as a training facility for the Cargill complex, and it gives them needed space for their financial offices.
“But we’re now going to have a Cargill footprint in Wapello County. The building hasn’t had property taxes in 20 years, but Cargill will be paying property taxes when this is complete. We can be really proud of that.”
—The county approved a resolution to pay $3,250 for its half of the feasibility study with the City of Ottumwa for a potential overpass over the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks on Quincy Avenue.
— Chad Drury can be reached at cdrury@ottumwacourier.com, and on Twitter @ChadDrury
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