What’s taking so long?
Some of the emergency generators from 2013 will go into housing projects in spring
After a year and a half of waiting, the Hoboken Housing Authority has approved funding to install some of the backup power generators it purchased after Superstorm Sandy. Fourteen of the mammoth metal machines have been sitting in a parking lot in the federally funded projects since the summer of 2013, through changes in HHA leadership and several storms.
At its Dec. 11 meeting, the HHA’s supervisory Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to authorize Executive Director Robert DiVincent to award a $407,189 contract for the installation of six generators at the agency’s lowest lying buildings.
This past Wednesday, DiVincent said his appointed contractor, Arco Contractors, had already begun preparatory work for installation of the first six. The generators will be placed at 300 Marshall Dr., 310 Marshall Dr., 320 Marshall Dr., 400 Marshall Dr., 311 Harrison St., and 320 Jackson St.
DiVincent said that not all of the generators are needed and that the HHA may actually sell some of them.
During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Hoboken Housing Authority was without power for two weeks, partly because 10 backup generators were flooded. All of the damaged generators have since been repaired, but the newer, more powerful generators sit in a parking lot at Fourth and Harrison streets.
Two-year delay
In February of 2014, a representative of HUD told The Hoboken Reporter that the generators were slated to be installed in spring of 2014, but they were not. The balance of power on the housing board shifted in March 2014, and the old executive director was terminated this past August.
DiVincent said he did not know why the generators hadn’t been installed yet.
_____________
“The doors are unlocked in Harrison Gardens and instead we used the money to buy generators.”—Dana Wefer
____________
But HHA Board of Commissioners Chair Dana Wefer said that when the HHA released a bid request for the generator installation contract last year, its specifications were poorly drafted, leading to a paucity of bidders.
Residents largely unhappy with maintenance
Meanwhile, generators aren’t the only infrastructure problem that has plagued Hoboken’s public housing projects. At the Dec. 11 HHA board meeting, Barbara Reyes, the president of the HHA Resident Advisory Board, complained about maintenance work orders being ignored for over a month. She also said that calls to the Housing Authority’s 24-hour maintenance hotline were going unanswered.
“I feel like nobody is being held accountable,” said Reyes. “Nothing is getting done, and the residents get frustrated. It is sad, and it's sickening.”
Resident Sandra Smith said that a light in her hallway at 320 Harrison St. took at least a week to be repaired, and was only repaired after she went in person to the HHA offices to file a work order.
“If it is dark at nighttime going down or coming up,” said Smith, “and somebody trips and falls, that is an accident waiting to happen in the Housing Authority.”
Other issues mentioned at recent meetings include broken windows at 220 Harrison St., broken exterior lights at 218-222 Harrison St., and a homeless individual defecating in the staircase of 310 Jackson St.
One source alleged a bed bug infestation in an HHA building, but DiVincent said he had no knowledge of the situation.
But some residents expressed satisfaction with DiVincent’s response to a mice infestation in 310 Jackson St. “Whatever contractor he went out with, they really did a fantastic job,” said resident Arlette Braxton, noting that no rodent odor remained in her building.
Wefer and DiVincent said HHA workers will soon be trained to use a new electronic system for maintenance work orders. The system, known as iWork Order Module, was acquired by the agency under former Director Carmelo Garcia’s tenure but has not been implemented since.
According to Wefer, representatives from Gilson Software Solutions, the company that produces iWork, would be coming in to train employees in the system, which is compatible with iPads and iPhones. Among other things, the system can take work orders over the phone via voice recognition software.
Wefer said iWork should be up and running by April.
“Things should get much better very quickly, because we are going to have a streamlined way to handle everything,” said Wefer, “and we will have troubleshot all of those different places along the line from residents calling in with a complaint to getting the complaint fixed.”
Why were the generators bought?
According to DiVincent, the newer Blue Star generators are more powerful. They put out 100 to 200 kilowatts of power, enough to allow HHA buildings to run heat, elevators, and exterior lighting during power outages, whereas the current generators only produce enough to support emergency lighting. However, both DiVincent and Wefer expressed puzzlement last week as to why Garcia had bought the new generators.
“The doors are unlocked in Harrison Gardens and instead we used the money to buy generators,” said Wefer, who was not on the HHA board during Sandy but clashed frequently with Garcia before his termination in August 2014.
Funding for the new generators came from the large pool of flood insurance proceeds the HHA received after Sandy. The flooding also knocked out electronic lock systems in many of the same low-lying buildings now receiving generators, leaving their exterior doors unlocked for the past two years. Wefer believes the insurance would have been better spent addressing the doors.
At the moment, DiVincent said he does not have enough insurance money to install the remaining eight generators. At the Nov. 13 HHA board meeting, Chief Financial Officer Emil Kotherithara revealed that the Authority had gone roughly $2.25 million over budget in 2013, and preliminary figures for the 2014 budget show a similar deficit.
DiVincent said the HHA is pursuing grants that could fund the installation of additional generators. However, he is also open to selling the eight remaining generators at cost to raise money to fix the electronic locks. He said there were a number of agencies or buildings in Hudson County that could likely make use of them.
Garcia, who is currently a state assemblyman representing Hoboken, Union City, and parts of Jersey City, defended his purchase of the more powerful generators last week.
“The engineering assessment and maintenance service providers’ reports indicated that these aged generators needed replacement,” he wrote in an email. “You have many seniors and disabled persons, children who need electricity for their medicine like insulin or medical machines. It was my duty to protect the most vulnerable and to ensure we have generators that were Superstorm Sandy resistant.”
Panels still an issue
In order to ensure that the newly installed generators actually work in the event of another Sandy, electrical subpanels must be raised above the flood plain. The generators themselves have built-in three foot pedestals designed to keep their vital components dry.
“The problem right now is the generators will work, but they will be generating nothing because the electrical subpanels will be flooded,” said Wefer.
According to DiVincent, raising the panels was not part of the contract awarded in December because it was not included in the engineering plan for installing the generators drafted under Director Garcia. The HHA is now preparing a new contract proposal and determining where exactly the subpanels should go.
In order to be totally out of the flood plain, the subpanels must be at the level of apartments, and if enough exterior space does not exist, DiVincent said he might have to commandeer an apartment or a bedroom of an apartment to serve as a mechanical room.
Wefer said the HHA was currently seeking funds to relocate the panels, and has reached out to the Dawn Zimmer administration, Hudson County, the state, and FEMA as potential sources.
Recently, DiVincent met with Hoboken City Planner Caleb Stratton and representatives from state Department of Community Affairs to discuss the generator issue.
Read more: Michael Russo Hoboken
No comments:
Post a Comment