NEW PALTZ >> Town Hall employees will work in staggered four-hour shifts until new offices can be established to replace the current mold-infested municipal building.
The Town Board on Thursday approved both the new work schedules as well as paying $3,800 per month to rent nine modular office units. They will be placed near the town Highway Department garage on Clearwater Road.
“Town Hall will be open from 9 (a.m.) to 4 (p.m.), but one employee comes in 9 to 12:30 and another employee comes in from 12:30 to 4,” Supervisor Susan Zimet said.
“We can’t really have anybody in the building for an extended length of time,” she said. “We really need to get out of the building as soon as possible, but we can’t really shut down town operations. So what we’re doing is minimizing the amount of time anybody spends in the building.
“After about three-and-a-half hours is when things get really bad,” Zimet said. “Everybody starts getting really serious headaches, the eyes start to burn, your cough returns, your throat hurts. The first couple hours you can manage, but after about three hours, it’s like you really start to fall apart.”
The mold was found in basement storage areas underneath several offices in the Town Hall on state Route 32.
The modular units, measuring 64 by 104 feet each, will be rented from Clifton Park-based ModSpace, which will charge $58,000 to deliver them.
“Our expectation is that if everything goes really well, we should be in [the modular units] by the middle of October,” Zimet said.
The modular units will house the town supervisor, bookkeeper, assessor, clerk and planning, zoning and building departments.
Zimet said computer equipment will be moved in stages to avoid cutting off services to town residents.
“It will be about a five-week transition,” the supervisor said. “We’ll start doing the site work up at the highway [garage property]. We have to grade the parking lot because the parking lot at the highway garage is pretty pathetic … and we’ll get the sewer and water and all of the infrastructure needs in place.”
Public meetings will be held in the Community Center behind the Town Hall.
“Every committee, including the Planning Board and Town Board, will be having their meetings there,” Zimet said.
