Clear Lake council tonight to set hearing, bid letting dates for City Hall renovation project

CLEAR LAKE — The Clear Lake City Council tonight will be asked to set the date for a public hearing and bid letting for the remodeling and security renovation project on the administrative side of City Hall. The council had allocated $1 million in this year’s budget to undertake the project.

Mayor Nelson Crabb says one of the upgrades will include making the office more accessible for people with disabilities.  “We have many times where people who are physically challenged will come in and our city staff have to go out around the desk to them to meet them and talk with them outside of their desk themselves. We need to go in and make some new arrangements.”

Crabb says there’s other things on the administrative side of the building that have not been addressed since the building opened in the mid-1960s.  “Some of those walls that we have in there were temporary walls put in a good number of years ago. Sound-proof and such as that, and even security walls even in some areas, security windows in practically all the areas. The biggest thing that we who are there on a daily basis is the HVAC system. That simply is not up to 2023 standards. Much of it has been fixed over and over again throughout those 58 years and it needs a lot of attention.”

The council at their last meeting approved a lease to temporarily relocate the City Hall administrative side to the Pritchard’s Innovation Center.  Crabb says they hope to be back into City Hall by July 1st.  “By June 14th, hopefully everything will be complete and we will begin relocating back to City Hall where we are now sometime between the 17th and 28th of June.”

The council is being asked to set the deadline for project bids on October 10th with the council holding a public hearing at their October 16th meeting.

The council meets tonight at 6 o’clock at City Hall.