Building problems and no quick fixes

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Building problems and no quick fixes

Officials regroup, tackle costly repairs

BY TRACEY KAPLAN

Mercury News Staff Writer

It was a warm day outside, but inside Chief Tim 's office, it seemed

like winter. Santa Clara County's jail warden cranked his space heaters to

``high'' and slipped into a faux-fur parka.

He had just a few minutes to warm up before the heaters blew a fuse and the

power shut down in part of the 43-year-old jail. knew it was no use

complaining to overworked county maintenance crews. They had more important

priorities. That day, they were fixing leaky shower stalls.

The Main Jail South building, where has an office, is perhaps the most

extreme example among county-owned buildings that are showing signs of

deterioration. This year, the county had to close the moldy San

courthouse, make extensive repairs on a leaking courthouse in downtown San

and replace a courtroom ceiling in Santa Clara that suddenly collapsed.

Flaws in building design, construction and inspection contributed to the

recent problems, but county officials acknowledge that some of the

deterioration stems from nearly two decades of slack maintenance. Those

officials blame chronic under-funding and bureaucratic disorganization for

the maintenance shortfall. Alarmed that years of neglect may finally have

caught up with the county, they are struggling to make up for lost time

before more of the county's 159 public buildings fail catastrophically.

But problems ranging from worn-out electrical cables to aging plumbing won't

be fixed overnight and the work is certain to cost more now than it would

have if maintenance had been a priority all along. Even with a recent

increase in spending, it's doubtful that the county will ever catch up with

its ballooning maintenance backlog.

``We're very lucky those things don't happen more of the time,'' said Mike

Howorth, chief steward for the General Services Agency, whose employees

include plumbers, electricians and other maintenance workers. ``We've kept

things together with bubble gum and tape.''

The neglect began in 1978 when Proposition 13, which cut property taxes

dramatically, gutted local government budgets. Like many other Bay Area

counties, Santa Clara County opted not to cut human services. Instead, it

drastically cut spending for routine maintenance and indefinitely postponed

major projects, such as replacing roofs and window sealants. More cuts were

made during the recession in the early 1990s, when the state raided county

coffers to fund education.

In 1997, the county spent about $8 million on building maintenance, the same

amount as 18 years earlier despite substantial increases in the number and

age of county buildings. By that time, the county had amassed a deferred

maintenance backlog of $55 million.

In addition to increasing the annual maintenance budget in 1997, worried

county supervisors allocated $27.5 million over a five-year period ending in

2002 to reduce the backlog.

But little was done to correct inefficiencies in the way the building

department was run or to substantially enlarge the staff, which receives

25,000 emergency repair calls a year and maintains thousands of pieces of

equipment, from fire alarms to elevators.

Funding increased

Now that economic times are good, a new group of county building officials

and politicians have renewed efforts to catch up. In March, eight years

after an outside auditor recommended the building department make

significant organizational changes, the reorganization was launched. The

plan calls for hiring 29 new employees, increasing the current staff of 104

by about a third. And last month the county board of supervisors allocated

an extra $1 million for maintenance, bringing the total for next year to

$13.5 million, plus $5.5 million for deferred projects, the highest it's

ever been.

But that still falls about $5 million short of the level the supervisors

concluded last summer was needed.

``We have substantially increased our resources,'' said McKinsey, GSA

director. ``We want to move the culture here away from fixing things when

they are broken to being proactive, and we're doing that.''

In a sign that the changes are already making a difference, county employees

who call in to complain about everything from jammed windows to leaks are

getting much faster service, building officials say. Last summer, 2,700

emergency service calls were stacked up. Now, there are about 975 complaints

waiting in the pile. And callers whose complaints are not emergencies now

wait 20 days rather than four months for a response.

But by another measure, the effort so far has had less of an impact. Despite

making significant progress on major jobs, such as fixing emergency

generators, crews are still finding it tough to keep up with ongoing

maintenance. There were 3,497 tasks at last count. The less maintenance now,

the more potential breakdowns later, said Jay , former manager of

building operations who resigned last month in a dispute over how the

department is run.

But the backlog could be even higher because half of the buildings still

need to be inspected to determine what needs to be done, said. The

plan is eventually to assign 50 workers to do preventive maintenance if the

backlog of emergency service calls continues to drop, he said. ``To do it

all, we'd really need 105 people,'' said.

Pay now or pay later

Bureaucrats often complain about being understaffed. But in this case, it's

pay now, or pay more later, according to Supervisor Joe Simitian, who wants

the county to increase spending on maintenance. For example, the financially

strapped building department neglected the county's parking lots during the

lean years, patching potholes only when they became big enough to attract

attention. As a result, many of the lots have disintegrated to the point

where they will have to be resurfaced after 20 years instead of 40 years at

a higher cost to taxpayers.

``It's like if you never changed the oil in your car, there's an impact that

can't be undone,'' said Carruth, facilities director. ``But if you

start now, it's much better than not doing anything.''

Lack of sufficient maintenance also contributed to the problems at

courthouses in Santa Clara, San and downtown San .

In Santa Clara, the ceiling collapsed because water was gushing out through

a gummed-up air valve on an overhead heating pipe. The valve was improperly

installed and had not been replaced in 23 years. The county is now

inspecting these valves in about 80 of its oldest buildings. The valves cost

about $95 each, not including labor, while the damage to the courtroom was

estimated at $27,000. Until recently, the building department was so busy

that crews would probably have replaced only the obviously defective valve

before they had to move on to other jobs, Howorth said.

Ballooning costs

In San , the $7.5 million courthouse shut down only four years after

it opened in 1995 because it is infested with a potentially toxic mold

triggered by leaks that county officials allege in a lawsuit were caused by

design and construction flaws. The county has spent more than $2.8 million

so far to relocate employees to portable offices.

The Hall of Justice in San also is leaking so badly that county

officials allege in a lawsuit that it could cost $10 million to fix,

one-third the cost of the building.

Both buildings apparently started leaking right away, but it took building

officials years to realize the problems were widespread, partly because they

were so short-staffed.

Up until two years ago, the department had only 84 workers, the same number

of employees it had 18 years before when the county owned half as much

square footage.

``The budget cuts hit us like a neutron bomb,'' said ez, a phone

operator for the department. ``The people died, but the buildings

remained.''

Other Bay Area counties experienced similar cutbacks and also have begun to

spend more on maintenance. In Contra Costa County, for instance, a

courthouse leak four years ago that cost $600,000 to repair was the wake-up

call, said Kathy Brown, deputy director of that county's General Services

Agency.

``The lesson is, if you take care of buildings, they'll last maybe 30 years

longer than if you just let them fall apart,'' Brown said.

In Santa Clara County, the budget cuts were exacerbated by the inefficient

way the department operated, according to a 1991 independent audit.

Workers wasted time making long trips from remote locations to the

department's San headquarters on Berger Drive instead of working out of

satellite offices. Carpenters and other skilled workers who make about

$60,000 spent precious time standing in line at Orchard Supply Hardware to

buy their own supplies, a practice that continued until this March. And,

until this spring, the department was organized by trades, so jobs that

required a carpenter, plumber and electrician took weeks to coordinate

because the workers worked for different supervisors.

The system was so inefficient that officials at Valley Medical Center, the

county's public hospital, formed an independent maintenance crew in 1994.

``I just didn't get the productivity I expected for the money,'' said Duane

Oberquell, facilities director for the Santa Clara Valley Health and

Hospital System.

To change the system, building officials last year met 22 times with the

department's unions. Now, the county can put a crew together to repair a

problem with one phone call instead of having to go through several shop

supervisors.

Longtime employees also say that political considerations are not as

important as they used to be in assigning work crews. In the past, powerful

county officials often got better service, they said. For instance, a crew

once installed a special paging system so former County Executive Sally

could summon two corner elevators in the 11-story Government Center.

was afraid of heights and did not want to ride in the building's glass-sided

elevators.

But change doesn't happen overnight, at least when it comes to county

politics.

Nothing had been done about 's meat locker of an office for years until

building officials learned the Mercury News wanted to photograph the chief

huddled over his space heaters. The next day, the problem had been fixed.

The jail still needs at least $6.9 million worth of repairs, but won't

spend the summer shivering.

``Gosh, it's amazing the way the timing of this thing worked out,''

mused. ``My secretary Carol tells me this is the first time in 10 years it's

worked.''

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Contact Tracey Kaplan at tkaplan

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