The Town of Batavia has outgrown their space at the Batavia Town Hall on West Main street.
The Town moved into the building in 2002 with about 7 employees.
Today, there are about 33 employees working in very small spaces or no space at all. The work space area for the Zoning, Inspection, Engineering and Water Department are delegated to an area the size of our living rooms with no dividers or partitions, so phone conversations are difficult. Most employees step outside or are doing their business calls in their vehicles. The Town Supervisor does not really have an office, but a small work station in an office with one other employee in a space that could be a large closet.
On Wednesday night, the Town Board passed a resolution to hire Design and Drafting by Gina, of Seven Springs Road in Batavia, to come up with a solution to the Town’s lack of space issue. At a rate of $60 per hour, not to exceed $5,000, a draft person will provide the Town with concept drawings of their existing footprint and what other possible additions or amendments to the building that could be done to provide a more efficient use of the current space.
The building does not have a basement and the attic space is being used for the heating and cooling plants.
Taking up a large amount of space in the office area are very large filing cabinets.
“We have scanned and put stuff in digital form more than any other community in NYS,” says Town Supervisor Greg Post.
“These are vital records that have to be accessed because they are in constant use, so that takes up an enormous segment of the footprint that could be used. We need to maximize the space we have and we need to look a the least expensive, most efficient use of the building so we can modify the building to better attend to the business of the Town, right now we are losing efficiency.”
The Town of Batavia Court has also become five times busier according to Post. The court employs two Judges and has staff that also require space.
“They are using it almost 2-3 days a week, so the use of that space is limited, so we have had to reallocate space for other meetings during the day.”
With the court now meeting during the day instead of having night court, another meeting room has now become the main meeting room.
“The other meeting room down the hall is constantly being used and booked by everybody for every meeting that comes in,” says Post.
“Its a job just managing the little space that we have and we can offer rooms for two meetings on separate topics.”
7 years ago there was talk of considering a three town court facility on Park road involving Elba, Oakfield and the Town of Batavia along with the Chamber of Commerce offices.
Post says the Chamber could not wait any longer and the town of Oakfield and Elba Courts went their separate ways.
“There are times we have had to move a town board meeting because of an arraignment, but we have been managing that.”
Post says the Town is not looking to spend the extra money necessary to build a separate court facility at this time unless there are other parties willing to step up and do that.
“We are not looking to do a big expansion, we are just looking for some temporary relief from the situation we are in and we are looking for a low cost answer to our challenges here.”
Post says a lot of towns in the area do not have this issue because their towns are getting smaller, they are less busy, their hours are fewer.
“Our town is growing, we are open 55-60 hours a week and we are open from 6a.m. to 7p.m. Its been working, but we need to plan for every contingency we are going to encounter. We are in our 16th year here and we need to have a plan to mitigate the consequence of stuff that was designed to last 10-20 years. We are getting there and we don’t have a plan, so lets start planning now so we have a solution and then we can make applications for funding and hopefully we can get this funded with grant dollars.”
Post says planning now will prevent the town with being stuck with something that does not work down the line.
An example he says is the City of Batavia Police station.
“This has been kicked down the road for 30 years and at some point the door is going to close and no one is going to get to go in it anymore, then what is the plan. If you don’t have one you are kind of stuck. We want to have a plan and don’t want to be in that boat, that is not good stewardship of the community’s money.”