Photo by Lester Smith
Viewed through a west window, auditorium seats are seen stacked in the lower lobby of the Kent Memorial Library. They were removed by the Sufffield Highway Crew, as the auditorium must be reconfigured to meet handicapped accessiblity and safe egress requirements before the room can be returned to use. Specific plans for a new seating installation are being considered.
The optimistic headline on the front page, above the fold of the April 2016 edition of the Observer, was “Library Looks to Open Soon.” The main obstacle to reopening was reported to be one key air quality test. Well, as many will recall, the library failed that test, and almost two years have been spent in determining why and in planning what to do about it.
As more recently reported, the Permanent Building Committee believes it has identified the source of the marginally excessive PCB contamination the air quality test discovered. A remediation program, determined from the results of a pilot test in the library gallery, has been developed with the help of consultant Bob May. This program – a belt-and-suspenders combination of removal and encapsulation – was described in general terms in last month’s Observer update. In mid-February, the specifics of that program were being adjusted by consultant May to accommodate EPA concerns about the initial proposal.
One recent change is the plan to deal with the large quantity of possibly contaminated books left on shelves in the building after the library operation moved to Ffyler Place in November 2014. These books had been sealed in plastic during the new entrance construction and old infrastructure updating program (March 2015 to April 2016), but the books were optimistically unwrapped before results of the “final” air quality test were reported. First Selectman Melissa Mack has announced that, instead of cleaning the exposed books for continued used, they would be removed and discarded, a decision based on public safety, cost efficiency, and the perceived limited value of these “older” books. The plan was approved by the Library Commission at a special meeting on January 29, with the understanding that the library’s book budget would be increased by at least $30,000. Some of the new funds may go toward study modules to be placed in space made available by the discarded books.
Those books were removed on February 8 and 9. The work was done by National Library Relocators, a professional company found by facilities manager Julie Oakes which was experienced in efficiently moving large quantities of uncrated books.
An additional large quantity of books remaining in the library had been stored in boxes and were not considered contaminated. About 6,000 DVDs also remain, as their plastic cases do not absorb contaminants. The library’s historical collections had been removed before 2015 and stored variously; some remain available, though somewhat awkwardly, as they are temporarily shelved in the historical room of the East Granby library and the archives room of the King House Museum. (A few other items, including two antique clocks, are also temporarily stored at the King House.)
The status of the historical room at Kent Memorial Library is not yet settled. Library Director Jackie Hemond plans a renovated room with “compact storage” (movable file drawer stacks), and those units have been purchased and delivered, but the certified architectural drawings requested by Building Inspector Ted Flanders for his review and approval are still being prepared.
Efforts to reconfigure the auditorium seating, whose aisles have been judged inadequate for handicapped accessibility and safe egress, have begun. R. H. Lord, a Manchester company that offers office furniture and auditorium seating in the northeast region, has designed four new configurations for the library auditorium, with various widths and numbers of seats. Also, the existing seats, which had been installed in 2004, have not aged well. Early in February, all the old seats were removed by the Suffield Highway Crew. Former Public Works Director Jack Muska, who occasionally accepts contracts from the Town as a consultant, has been tasked to arrange for a choice of new seating and supervise the new installation. He reports that he was asked to complete the project, for which he says Town funding is available, by September.
Muska had also been asked to arrange for the Highway Crew to remove the empty book shelves that are still attached to the library walls, so the walls can be cleaned and painted during the eventual PCB remediation.