The City of Morgan Hill is getting ready to spend nearly $1 million to upgrade its City Council meeting chambers in order to accommodate larger crowds, improve public access and modernize the meeting hall’s audiovisual equipment and broadcasting capability.
The preliminary cost estimate for an interior City Hall meeting chamber redesign of $966,400 produced by Weston Miles Architects in Morgan Hill includes moving the council’s designated meeting area into the middle of the building located at 17575 Peak Ave., with a partial new roof and some interior construction required. This includes the removal of walls and counters that remain in the vacant space almost a year after the city moved all its staff and equipment out of the nearly 40-year-old structure.
Lesley Miles of Weston Miles Architects presented two design concept options to City Council at its regular meeting Wednesday. One of the concepts would seat up to 280 people in the audience, the other would seat up to 180 people. The Council unanimously decided to go with the larger option.
The estimated cost for the option with lower seating capacity is about $878,000.
“It was not a huge additional cost, and we’re trying to look forward to having a (meeting) chamber that’s large enough to serve our needs, hopefully for the next 20 years, and one that better serves the public many years into the future,” Councilman Gordon Siebert said after Wednesday’s meeting.
The current, “deficient” meeting room is too small and often “overflowing” during council or planning commission meetings, Siebert said. The chamber currently holds an audience of only 60 to 80 spectators. The layout of the chamber is such that visibility of the dais, public commenters and staff presentations is significantly limited from sections of the audience. The acoustics are “poor” in corners of the room, Siebert added.
Furthermore, public and disabled access to seating, restrooms and parking are restricted in the current meeting chamber, according to city staff. The new design concept approved by the council would also provide an enclosed lobby or foyer between the outside of the building. The new chamber will allow audience members and others conducting city business to prepare for the council meeting or to discuss Council decisions or agenda items without bothering the rest of the audience. Additional smaller rooms surrounding the main chamber room would allow conference space and other ancillary uses.
Councilman Rich Constantine called the current chamber’s audiovisual equipment “antiquated.”
“It’s moving forward, giving the citizens a nicer area to meet, and a more comfortable area to meet, and modernizing our facility to help us do our business better for the public,” Constantine said.
The city has been working on a solution since September 2011, when the Council decided to close the main City Hall building which houses the meeting chamber and move all city services – which at the time included the mayor’s, city manager’s and city attorney’s offices, as well as passport and other administrative service – to the Development Services Center a few hundred yards away. Since January, the main City Hall building has been used only for its meeting chambers, which are used for council and planning commission meetings.
The move was made as a cost-cutting effort, as consolidating city staff to the DSC was projected to save the city about $100,000 per year after the one-time moving costs of about $275,000 are recovered, city staff said.
But Siebert added the city has talked about moving its meeting chamber or improving the existing one for about the last decade. As part of the decision to move staff out of the building last year, the Council entertained the idea of using the Community and Cultural Center at 17000 Monterey Road as its chamber, but after more consideration decided earlier this year that staying on the City Hall campus – where the DSC, public library and meeting chamber are located – was better for the public.
The new design concept for keeping the chamber in its current building would not require any significant structural changes or an expansion to the building, Miles said. The preliminary estimated cost includes expenses for partial demolition and asbestos abatement, signage, parking and other exterior improvements, carpentry, acoustics improvements, lighting and electrical modifications, flooring, interior painting, furnishings and restroom upgrades for disabled access, according to a report from Miles.
The cost also includes about $250,000 in new technology and associated upgrades for the facility’s audiovisual system which allows live television broadcasts, viewing and storage of meeting videos on the Internet, electronic presentations by city staff and the public and perhaps eventually live webcasts of the meetings.
Council members don’t immediately think the cost sounds exorbitant, nor do they think it would short other needed capital projects such as street repairs or downtown parking.
Funding for the project would come from a variety of city funds – including impact fee funds and a building replacement fund financed by developers, according to Morgan Hill community services director Steve Rymer.
The city could also use an infrastructure fund financed by a cable franchise fee paid by all cable subscribers, which generates about $15,000 annually, according to City Manager Ed Tewes. Use of those funds is limited to items such as technology upgrades to the local public access television system. Audiovisual upgrades at the meeting chamber qualify for those funds, Tewes added.
Although some of the funds suggested for financing the Council chamber upgrades could be used on other capital projects in town, the Council has determined the chamber project is at least equal in priority to those.
“One of our highest priorities is informing the public about city business” – which a modern meeting chamber would accomplish, Siebert said. He added that informing the public and demonstrating a need is an important prerequisite for any capital expense, and that process started more than a year ago for the Council chamber.
The Council’s decision Wednesday was not an appropriation of the funding, or the approval of a final design for the project – but rather a go-ahead to city staff to begin setting the project in motion. First, the city will likely retain an architectural design firm via bid process to produce detailed designs and construction costs. That could go out to bid as soon as the beginning of 2013, according to city staff.
Last year, when the Council decided to move its staff out of City Hall, they suggested trying to lease the space to a private user such as an organization or church. While that has proven difficult, Council members mentioned Wednesday that an expanded, modernized chamber could be leased for one-time community meetings or church gatherings, or even to the Morgan Hill Unified School District since its board meeting room routinely spills out the doors.
In fact, that’s one reason why the Council opted for the design with higher seating capacity at Wednesday’s meeting.
“The larger space is perhaps good for a church on the weekends. I respect the cost difference, but just to do it all at once is the smarter thing to do,” Councilwoman Marilyn Librers said at Wednesday’s meeting.
