"New" City Hall Plans Remain Available

http://www.rodriguezquiroga.com/?projects=homestead-city-hall


HOMESTEAD (CBSMiami) – Homestead’s City Council will meet Monday evening to discuss what they should do about City Hall.

It’s a place employees are not to go anymore. Down in the basement, CBS4 found moldy carpet and mold colonies growing between the walls and the wallpaper. Recent testing revealed that the building is also contaminated with radon, a radioactive-cancer causing gas. Inside the room which houses the air conditioning and duct system, there is standing water and more mold.

“Because they have mold in them, they have air quality that has been affected from the radon that is coming from the basement, so basically the whole air duct system from the A/C would have to be replaced according to the reports that we found from the environmental agencies,” said city spokesperson Begone Cazalis.

According to the reports, inspectors found asbestos and sections of City Hall which had more than double the levels of radon which requires some sort of action to be taken.

Intern Bradley Jean Joseph said he wasn’t aware there were problems until now.
“Oh, that’s not good,” said Joseph.

“I worry about it but it is, you know, it’s a process,” said City Hall worker Maria Rosado.

The structure was built in 1959 and that’s a part of the problem; there are some holes in the building as large as a person’s arm which have never been repair.

In 2009, city officials talked about building a new City Hall one but scrapped the plans because of money concerns. Now they may have to revisit those plans.
City leaders estimate that it will take $2 million to fix the old City Hall and significantly more for a new building.

“Since the day that we got the results we’ve been working on finding out how much its going cost to mitigate the problem, where can we move the employees, finding spaces available within the city,” said Cazalis.
The original fund for a new City Hall remains intact, according to city officials. Whether they will be able to add to it by finding available funds in next year’s budget remains a question.