OPENPUBLICA · PUBLIC MEETING RECORD
Record of Proceedings

Allentown Public Works Committee Meeting - July 15, 2026

Meeting PortalWednesday, July 15, 2026
BodyAllentown, Pennsylvania
SessionMeeting Portal
DateWednesday, July 15, 2026
StatusNEW · FILED
Video Record
0:00 / 42:07
Transcript — Verbatim
0:31

Hello, Candida.

0:33

All right, we got you on board.

0:36

We're about to start the public work.

0:39

All right, thank you.

1:05

Ready to go?

1:06

Yep.

1:14

Good evening.

1:16

Welcome to public works committee meeting.

1:20

And today we have um oh, I would like to say that everyone, um everyone is here.

1:28

Mr.

1:29

Hanlon, please read Bill 49.

1:31

Bill 49 amends the 2026 capital fund budget to provide for an increase of fifteen thousand dollars to fund the purchase of a rectangular rapid flashing vegan crosswork warning sign to be installed at mid-block crossrock on fourteenth street between Allen and Tillman Street as part of the AARP community challenge grant the city was awarded, and that is at uh Gross Towers.

1:57

Go ahead, Mr.

1:57

Shatter.

1:58

Yes, good evening, Vice President Mota, and thank you, members of council.

2:02

Um what we're doing this evening is we're appropriating the funding that we received through the AARP grant.

2:08

Uh it's fifteen thousand dollars to install a RRFB.

2:12

I know it's a lot of words there, but uh it's a rectangular rapid flashing beacon device that will be installed on 14th Street between Tillman and Allen.

2:21

Uh it's gonna really help the elderly um crossing from Gross Towers there into the shopping center.

2:27

Uh we also have Louis Ramos Elementary School that's also in the area.

2:31

Uh so having that flashing device there to assist pedestrians and the elderly in that area crossing to and from the school and getting into the shopping center and into gross towers is gonna be very essential, critical to their overall safety.

2:44

Uh this is a no-match required grant, so it's a really cool project that we're looking forward to undertaking.

2:50

I'm excited, I'm really am because um I I uh work very closely um with the senior citizens on uh 14th Street and uh and also the the the the students are gonna be benefiting a lot.

3:08

Um yeah, it could be very dangerous that that street.

3:12

So I'm glad I'm glad that we're um that we're doing this.

3:17

And he's uh and he's heavily used.

3:21

So yeah.

3:23

Any comments from the Dais?

3:26

No, I just kind of I know we don't have too many people here today, but I just can't reiterate enough how important some of these grants are.

3:34

Um I know people sometimes feel like well we're spending money on this, spending money on that.

3:39

This is money that we've been able to you know, we've earned and gotten from other sources that don't come from taxpayers that is being invested in our communities and and making it better for everyone who lives here.

3:50

So um just another great instance of grant funding that helps us do great things.

3:56

So thank you.

3:57

And we would never say no to money, right?

3:59

Absolutely.

4:04

That is awesome.

4:06

Okay, any other comments from the public no comments from the public.

4:15

I would like someone to make a motion.

4:18

I'll make a motion to forward to full council.

4:21

Okay.

4:24

I'll second it.

4:25

Ms.

4:26

Candida will second.

4:28

All those in favor say aye.

4:30

Aye.

4:31

Okay.

4:32

So Bill 49 will be moved.

4:35

Uh favorably in front of full council.

4:40

And now we have uh a presentation.

4:43

Yes, that's correct.

4:44

And I'm gonna turn it over to uh Mr.

4:47

O'Rourke here, who's our facilities manager in building maintenance.

4:50

Uh is gonna give you a high level overview of the uh facility.

4:54

Um facility condition assessment that we've done to a lot of our city properties, and then he's gonna turn it over to AMGG to uh present.

5:03

So before we start, can you tell me how that went up?

5:08

How um when did this happen again?

5:11

Uh we received the grant an amount of 200,000 to do this assessment of all of our city-owned uh buildings.

5:19

Um the overall time frame of the assessment, I believe took three months or so to complete.

5:28

Yeah.

5:29

Okay, go ahead.

5:36

All right, there we go.

5:38

Um, this is gonna be uh a really good tool for the city.

5:42

Um it's gonna help us um predict and replace equipment.

5:48

It's also gonna help us budget uh well into the future.

5:52

So um we can come up with five-year plan or whatever kind of budgetary needs we need.

5:57

So it's it really is a good tool.

6:00

It it'll allow us to uh see what equipment is coming up for replacement, uh, what should we be replaced, and what should be maintained.

6:12

So, and here is David now.

6:14

Thank you.

6:16

So, as Mr.

6:17

Aurork uh explained, we were uh selected to conduct the facility condition assessments for the city of Allentown.

6:25

If you can go to the scope of work, which is the next tab, please.

6:31

One more.

6:33

Sorry, one more.

6:34

There you go.

6:35

Uh we conducted facility condition assessments for 76 facilities, which encompassed just over 635,000 square feet.

6:43

Uh in doing so, we had originally spent about a month in the planning phase uh coordinating with Megan and your predecessor, which was uh Nick Gruber and David Patrick, and that one month period of time we were able to come up with a action plan to get into all the facilities with minimal intrusion to the folks that were currently working in those facilities.

7:11

And then we conducted about a two-month period of time where we were on site with a five-person team.

7:17

Uh that team was encompassed of an interior architect, an exterior architect, a mechanical, an electrical, and an uh plumbing assessor uh to basically assess all of the components within your facilities, inventorying them and giving them a condition rating, which would then be wrapped up into our inmo program to provide capital expenditure planning for the next 30 years.

7:44

Can you go to the next slide, please?

7:47

Back one.

7:52

We utilized one more, two more.

8:04

Yeah, to the inmo one.

8:06

Thanks.

8:07

Uh I went back a little bit.

8:09

There you go.

8:10

So MO is what we used as a proprietary program that was developed uh with our collaborative engineering partner, HDR, and it is a data collection tool that allows us to expeditiously inventory uh the facilities and their components.

8:27

What it provides is a cost effective means for facility condition assessments, uh giving you a detailed PDF for every facility, and I can show you guys one of those here shortly.

8:40

Uh, these are about 400 to 600 page PDF reports for every facility.

8:45

Um you also get an Excel data flat file that provides all of the information, which is your kind of a la carte option for moving forward.

8:56

So you have your master planning now and a capital expenditure plan that's been provided, but the growth opportunities here for you guys to move into a uh web-based program in the future are easily integratable at a substantially lower cost.

9:16

Uh you're gonna be provided with, or you were provided with a uh detailed inventory, and the degradation curves are for each of these components was based on the install year, the design life, as well as the assessors attached condition rating, which is on a nine-point scale.

9:37

You go to the next slide, please.

9:39

We utilize the ASTM unit format two, uh, which encompasses 14 master systems.

9:45

So anything that we provided is gonna follow this this formatting where you have A10 is your foundations all the way through D30 HVAC, D50 Electrical.

10:00

These are two two-digit master codes, then you have four digit master codes for subsystems, and then the component level is your six-digit codes, which you would see in the Excel flap file or in your reporting.

10:11

Next slide, please.

10:14

So your direct condition assessment is the first stage.

10:17

You inventory the components, and then everything was placed on a nine-point scale.

10:23

G minus, amber plus, red plus, red.

10:27

This is basically your flat line of the current condition of the components.

10:32

This is combined along with the install year, along with the typical life cycle and the cost analysis of the components to give you your graphs that we'll see here shortly.

10:44

But this is uh the definitions of basically how we have our assessors assess everything to make sure they're all on a the fair lake fair playing field.

10:57

Next page.

10:59

So roll-up results.

11:01

This is uh your 30-year summary for all capital capital expenditures.

11:05

This is a combination of all facilities that were assessed, all 74 facilities that were assessed.

11:10

So we gave everything a priority, low, moderate, and significant, and then you have your repair, your replace, and your total cost associated over the next 30 years.

11:21

Your BCI is going to be your building condition index.

11:25

Again, this is an average for all 74 buildings that were uh assessed.

11:30

So an 81 is going to land you right in the G minus range if you go back to that nine-point scale, and then your RCI is your risk condition index, which you're at a 1.5, which is a moderately uh high, you know, low priority, I guess.

11:48

Um, and then down below, you're gonna see your system condition index summary, which refers back to that 14 master systems A10 through E10 and their associated risks.

12:02

This is again just a major summary and an average of all of the facilities combined.

12:07

So if we go down to the next page, this is gonna be your 2025 uh project cost per system summary.

12:16

So everything has a priority of one through six.

12:20

Priority one is going to be your components that are not as in dire need of um replacement but more repairs, and then priority six is gonna be the ones that are uh more necessary to get fixed immediately.

12:40

Um again, your SCI is your system condition index here.

12:44

It's still on that nine-point scale.

12:47

Uh so you can see roofing versus interior structurally, most of the bid most of the facilities averaged out at an 83, which is a low green, and then you get into the HVAC, uh, which is at a 73, which appeared to need significant amounts of repair replacement throughout the time or throughout the next 30 years, sorry.

13:10

Next slide, please.

13:29

You can look at D30 for 2302 park and see that that's in a red condition, and you would reference this back to the reports that are provided to figure out exactly what components that's likely a chiller or a condensing unit that would need to be replaced or repaired.

13:46

Um the nice part about this is you have a Excel flat file that's easily filterable.

13:52

Um, we've gone over this with the public works department and basically explained how to use this data.

13:58

So this is again very, very high level, but it goes down to individual component levels where you can actually combine and create projects based off of the combination of multiple facilities.

14:10

So if you had multiple roofs that were in a amber minus or below condition, we'd just say 71 or 73 and below, you could combine those by filtering on the Excel, figuring out exactly what those replacement costs are, and then create a single RFP to combine multiple projects to get those at a lower cost in the future.

14:32

And if you can go to the next two to three slides, are pretty much the same explaining uh the breakdown for those system conditioned indexes across all the facilities that were assessed.

14:49

You can go down one more, one more.

15:00

So a little bit of value add while we were out here, because of the um production time that it took to inventory and assess all of the components associated with your facilities.

15:11

They were able to get us access into these facilities exponentially faster than we had initially expected.

15:18

Speaking with Megan, we had some additional time on our hands that we had allocated hours for to account for those funds that you guys had paid out.

15:28

And that being said, the parks department was looking for some ADA compliance checks.

15:33

So at no no cost to you guys, we did some additional ADA compliance reporting that was also delivered within that time period.

15:45

Go one more.

15:47

So through our technical close-out meetings with the public works department, we were basically able to train them and all requested personnel in the use of the data.

15:56

We've provided reports to be used to structure and prioritize the use of the available funding.

16:03

So you guys are able to optimize the corrective and ongoing replacement actions that are needed to maintain your facilities.

16:10

And the reports also help you guys validate and allocate additional funding for higher priority replacements and higher costed uh issues in the future.

16:22

Um we also continue to support.

16:25

Well, we will continue to support and train any of your uh personnel until the end of the period of performance is complete and answer any and answer and assist with any questions you guys may have that may arise in the future.

16:38

Uh I'd like to just state that this inventory and assessment is basically your foundation, it is your um concrete base for any asset management plan going forward.

16:52

And if you don't have the proper inventory and the proper assessment to start with, you're just starting off a program basically in shambles.

17:00

So uh taking the time to have this option done for you guys is a great step towards starting your asset management plan, and it also gives you guys the option to move forward with, like I said before, web-based uh programs in the future that allow for preventative maintenance planning, and you can just grow and grow into future programs, and this being at ASTM uniform at too will allow you guys to do that.

17:26

So that won't be the end of the presentation, right?

17:34

I do have a copy of one of the PDF reports that was delivered specifically actually for this building.

17:40

If you guys would like to see it, yes, um definitely.

17:45

I I just want to say thank you for doing this assessment.

17:48

It's very detailed.

17:50

Um, I I have a few um a few questions.

17:57

Um there's a lot of math involved and a lot of calculations that go into the back end, so it's very difficult to explain exactly how useful it is.

18:08

The public works folks that we've been able to train on it, 100% understand it, and these reports I guess are a little bit better of an explanation of exactly what's been delivered to you guys.

18:18

Again, they're like 600 pages each times 74 buildings.

18:22

So very detailed.

18:24

So, what I would like to know is again what what was the lowest uh score um that we had, which facility was it?

18:35

If you're going facility by facility, um the garage is definitely bad.

18:44

Let's see.

18:45

I mean, you had you had some smaller facilities on here too, like golf storage.

18:49

Um, that building condition indexes at 67.

18:53

Um I saw parks.

18:55

I I saw it in red.

18:58

Yeah.

18:59

So going down those that list that chicklet chart for the overall.

19:04

Um the BCI is a very useful tool if you're looking at the facilities as a whole.

19:12

Realistically, to start, you want to start at the bottom and work your way up, is the best methodology for approaching these and and looking at the data.

19:20

So we've can captured everything on the component level, and then you have your system level, which would be your next step, which is those that A10 through E10.

19:29

So approaching it from that standpoint, you'd want to look at what's your priority.

19:35

So a lot of people look at these projects, as I'll show you in this report, where it shows exactly where we recommend repair and replacements.

19:45

However, you're gonna want to prioritize items such as roofs or HVAC.

19:51

Um, interior finishes that may be bad in one facility and lowering that building condition index are not nearly as important as the actual uh more significant components, such as your HVAC or your sprinkler systems, safety-related items.

20:08

Yeah, safety.

20:09

So we can look at those buildings and say, yes, you know, your your storage facility or that uh that golf building is is in bad condition, but that's not necessarily gonna be your priority going forward.

20:22

Um you can use this tool or this data set to create projects that would help eliminate costs across multiple buildings, as I stated.

20:32

So if you filter to HVAC condensing units within the data set, and you wanted to correct 50 plus uh condensing units at the same time, you'd be able to submit an RFP out and have that repair or replacement cost already allocated from our third party engineering firm.

20:53

It would tell you exactly what it should cost.

20:56

That way you're not getting quotes in the future that are gonna tell you, you know, we need five million dollars to replace condensing units when in all actuality the cost is somewhere in the realm of one.

21:09

So it helps you guys in that aspect of not overspending or not selecting a company that's going to underbid it and not be able to perform um at the adequate cost of what it should cost you guys to do.

21:22

Yeah, but it's very detailed.

21:24

You give you giving us um you know the um the the rating of of the of each facility.

21:33

And um I think that the more we know the better.

21:36

I mean, this this is gonna help us.

21:39

These are these are definitely five to ten years from now, even longer.

21:43

Absolutely.

21:43

And if if you're trying to look a couple years out, can you go to uh data summaries real quick at the top and scroll down maybe three to four pages?

21:57

And again, you didn't mention that 81 is not that bad.

22:01

81 is not that bad.

22:02

Uh so your building condition index of 81 is a is it on the nine-point scale a G minus.

22:10

Um, not terrible.

22:11

You can have a G minus building that has a red um or a much lower rated HVAC system.

22:19

It's all cost weighted.

22:21

So the costs associated with certain components within a facility will help adjust that building condition index based off of the severity of the not only the condition, but also the cost of those components.

22:35

So if you had a uh a warehouse that has three unit heaters in it, and each unit heater costs ten thousand dollars.

22:44

Um those are in red condition.

22:47

That's not gonna drop your building condition index as much as a roof that costs a hundred thousand dollars is going to do.

22:55

So the everything is weighted.

22:57

And I'll get to that.

22:58

Uh that's down in the appendix under inmo uh information.

23:02

But real quick, I'm gonna have you go down two one or two more slides.

23:09

Let me see where you're at two more.

23:16

So this graph right here um is going to show you basically the risk index analysis, and that correlates with your repair and replacement costs.

23:28

So as you can see, somewhere in the realm of I can't quite read that from here, but I believe it's 2030, 2032, you have a spike um for your replacement costs.

23:41

And that's likely due to components that are exceeding their life cycle.

23:46

So again, if you go back to HVAC, uh this is your 30-year capital expenditure, uh expected expenditures uh going forward, and it'll show you which years you're gonna have higher spikes versus lower spikes um going forward.

24:02

So it gives you some pre-planning uh, you know, five, 10 years out all the way out to 30.

24:13

Any comments from the values?

24:16

Um I guess I'll start on this one just because it's the one that's presently up here and it found it pretty interesting.

24:23

So when it relates to the replacement versus the repair cost, I know you alluded to the spike on there.

24:29

I think everything's very kind of situational.

24:32

So, you know, does this projection go off of any sort of assumption that things that can be repaired are repaired when it's most beneficial, or I'm just curious how that ties into the analysis that's done on this graft here.

24:45

They do let me find you a bell curve real quick for one.

24:51

Every component has a bell curve test.

24:56

So we're kind of jumping ahead here, but it's fine.

24:58

Well, I was gonna say, I and and feel free.

25:00

I have a couple for some of the other stuff.

25:02

So if you click on degradation curves real quick, and you can go down one, two, three pages down the second one.

25:08

So sorry, the next one, the master chapter.

25:11

Um right above appendix.

25:13

A little bit lower, lower there.

25:16

Scroll, yeah, go down two pages, one or two.

25:20

Uh go down a couple more until we find one with a curve that's not a straight replacement.

25:26

So page 57 of 92.

25:32

Oh, sorry, I'm on a different one.

25:34

Keep going.

25:39

Oh there you go.

25:46

So right here you can see uh the condition ratings, and that orange line there is going to be uh your modified condition index.

25:56

So expected condition index is the life cycle of that component.

26:02

And you can see that over time, the expected uh condition degrades over you know a multi-year period of time, and then the modified condition index is a combination of our assessment, so what our assessors are seeing out in the field, as well as replacement costs, repair and replacement costs that are associated with that.

26:25

So that chart down at the bottom um will have replace or repair typically down there based off of the type of component.

26:33

If you have a uh a urinal, let's say, that component is gonna be a run to fail.

26:39

So that bell curve is not gonna correct itself at any point in time.

26:43

However, if you have a chiller for a facility, that chiller has a life cycle of let's say 30 years at the 10 year mark, it's going to allocate a certain amount of money to repair that unit.

26:59

That will bring you from a hundred point scale in 10 years, probably to around a 85 to a 90, and then that replacement cost that's been allocated will jump you back up to around a 98 to a 99 and ext and restart that curve all over again.

27:16

Certain components are a run to fail, so you'll see a linear line as we had to flip through quite a bit, and then you'll get to more of the dynamic equipment chillers, pumps, HVAC, roofing, things like that, where you can significantly extend the life cycle of a component.

27:34

Um and again, this is your baseline.

27:36

You you guys did not have a plan in place to begin with.

27:40

So some of these degradation curves are automatically starting at the repair, or they're or automatically starting at the replace because there are components that we've found that are in those conditions already.

27:52

So uh typically with a facility condition assessment program or an asset management program, you're looking primarily to have assessments done every five years.

28:04

Um the rule of thumb is a five-year plan and or 20% of all assets every year to get you to that 100% reassessment every five years, um is the norm.

28:17

And that also allows you to tighten up these curves because geographically uh components age at different speeds.

28:24

So if you had an HVAC component and you were stationed in per year in let's say Puerto Rico, the salt water degradation of those units is gonna significantly reduce that 20-year lifecycle down to a five-year life cycle.

28:38

Same thing goes for out here, it's just based off of the buildings themselves.

28:42

So as this program goes on and you guys adapt and get into a web-based program going forward and a tool that'll allow you to add in preventative maintenance and everything else, not just your initial 30-year capital expenditure planning.

28:57

Um it'll allow you to tighten up those curves and the program just builds off of this foundation.

29:03

Absolutely.

29:03

No, and I think that was just the key, because I know I did see on that first kind of summary page of the presentation, it it showed the overall rating, a replacement and repair cost, and then a total.

29:15

So my initial question was gonna be is that the current projected total to repair and replace at this point in time?

29:21

Um, but I guess the the the real and then I don't want to belabor the point, but really the thing is I I think it's a great tool that we can use to project some of our capital expenditures over time, and I'm just wanna make sure that I know public works has that in a way that they can use it to plan for it.

29:38

I'm wondering how our budget and finance department can maybe use that to look maybe 20 years down the road and project that a little bit further so that way it's not you know, again, surprises that we're seeing, you know, two to three years in advance, more so we can say, hey, look, we're gonna have a huge infrastructure overhaul in like 10 years, or we're gonna need to allocate funds for that.

30:00

So absolutely appreciate that.

30:01

Thank you.

30:01

Yep.

30:02

And then I guess the the last thing that I would just point out is these reports again, super informative, tons of information, tons of numbers.

30:10

If you go to the appendix for the inmo information, uh the next chapter down, and you can scroll down any amount of pages.

30:21

This is the full explanation of exactly how the assessments are conducted, inventoried, assessed, it shows you all the math behind all of the uh numbers, and this is the bread and butter for when you guys want to understand this report, is that chapter right there.

30:41

And all of these chapters also correlate directly to the Excel flat file that we have.

30:46

So that was provided to you guys.

30:48

That's every inventory of every all of our summaries, everything's in that flat file as well.

30:53

So this is the pretty version of the data, and then the usable version that your facilities and public works department are going to use to actually make these decisions will be used side by side.

31:05

They can filter through that Excel extremely easily with a couple clicks, find exactly what they want to work on based off of the significance of the condition rating as well as the costs and the buildings specifically.

31:17

So if you said we're not worried about a couple of these buildings over here, but these ones are our six primarily used buildings that we need to keep in um operational status, then you filter to just those and you find the significance and uh super easy to use and filter on.

31:34

And then if you needed proof, you have the photos and the projects already put together in this report in a very uh media friendly application.

31:46

Is there any go ahead?

31:48

Are you done?

31:49

I'm I'm done.

31:50

Thank you.

31:50

Thank you.

31:51

Yeah, uh, real quick.

31:52

Did you um just look in the list here?

31:54

Did you guys evaluate the public safety building attached to this building in your process here?

31:58

Yes.

31:59

Do you know where did that fall on the list of repair replace scoring?

32:05

Just curious.

32:07

Let's see.

32:21

I only took a couple of screenshots for this presentation.

32:24

I'd have to go back through and filter.

32:27

I can okay, pull it up.

32:28

I let me see if I can pull up that exact.

32:32

And while you're looking, I'm gonna ask uh director uh shada question real quick on this one.

32:37

Uh as we explore other buildings and either renovating them or new ones, um, I mean, new ones probably wouldn't would hopefully not have to be as scoped out for this for 30 years, but um, is there a method to incorporate that data once is so say we redo a um park?

32:56

Well, we we we do a building that's that's that's kind of having issues but hasn't been evaluated yet because it's a capital project.

33:02

Is there a process to then incorporate that change into this um if it's an existing building, or is this just kind of this is the point in time of the contract?

33:11

Yep.

33:14

Yeah, so we would have to um start like an asset tracking program to as we adapt and and uh fix stuff and the assets get better, we would have to track those, and then as David said in a five-year cycle, when we come back, that information would be added.

33:33

Uh, but the nice thing about this is where the format is if if we get the facilities tool that this information could go in, that facilities tool would track that for us.

33:42

Okay.

33:43

So as of right now, this is just a snapshot.

33:46

I do have plans to create some kind of asset tracking program for us since we have this now.

33:52

I don't want to lose all this data that we just got, so we'll make sure we create a tool for us until we decide to move towards a web-based program.

34:01

And does it does the current contract include like that five-year checkup, or if this is just point in time right now, and then we'd reevaluate at that point.

34:08

Yep, just point in time right now, and we'll reevaluate and then I guess the other question, which this would be an admin question, but since since this will look at um rough costs or of what to your point, a chiller would cost.

34:22

How can we have procurement incorporate that in the pro in the RFP process so that when that comes back, that data isn't lost.

34:30

I know this isn't probably not a you question, but but it would be helpful to know how we can get that part of the the life cycle of procurement so that they know that that's available because I think that's a that's a this it's a very useful tool.

34:42

I mean, I I use it in the industry I'm in.

34:44

Um, so that when when stuff comes in, they can use it as a reference.

34:47

So I think no matter how I don't know who that would go to, but I think from an admin perspective.

34:54

One of the things that Mr.

35:00

O'Rourke is gonna make a priority for himself is to really um digest this information and come up with an immediate plan, a three-year plan, five-year plan, and then a longer tenure plan.

35:05

So this way we're gonna know where to dedicate our resources and how to spend our funding more appropriately.

35:12

Um so until I really want to give them there's a lot of information here to digest and put together.

35:18

So our plan is to come back before council and share what the immediate plan is and the longer term planning part of this assessment is gonna look like, and then we could certainly work with procurement and work on how we're gonna put these projects out to bid then.

35:33

Okay.

35:34

And how many pages are we talking about?

35:37

The pages of the PDFs are substantial.

35:40

Again, it is used as uh a media reference, I would say.

35:45

The the reports themselves are phenomenal for you guys to look at if you want to see the conditions of the the facilities.

35:52

Mr.

35:52

O'Rourke here is gonna be using the Excel flat file to allocate and find those projects based off of significance of priority, and then if procurement uh needed additional media to kind of understand those RFPs, he could easily go from that one section of the Excel, and once he's narrowed it down to what he wants to prioritize to back to these reports to be able to snip snip or snapshot out these components to say, hey, this is what we have, this is the uh third-party engineering firm that came through and provided this information to us.

36:28

Now you have photos, you have replacement costs, you have belt curves, and he could provide that before asking for additional funding and/or providing uh information for an RFP.

36:38

I'm I'm excited about this assessment because we really needed to know.

36:43

We did speak a little bit today as well.

36:46

There's uh there may be some state uh opportunities, state funding opportunities.

36:52

Uh Pennsylvania as a whole has been making a fairly large push across multiple entities to do this.

36:58

I know there's another one out there right now for uh Department of Education doing the exact same facility condition assessments.

37:05

They already have tools in place and/or web-based applications for asset management.

37:12

And uh as we discussed, there's opportunities out there if you guys were to discuss with those other entities to share the costs of those web-based asset management programs, which would allow you to integrate this data in automatically.

37:26

You've had your assessment done, we would assist you guys with that.

37:30

Um, it'd be a very easy transition.

37:33

Um the problem is is when we were bidding on this, it was obviously a cost constraint to go to the web-based route.

37:41

However, now that we're realizing that there's multiple other entities within the state that are using it, sharing that licensing fee and or the server fees would be significantly reduced because that initial overhead cost is what's makes it a very difficult pill to swallow for uh a city or a town.

38:00

But when you combine multiple, you're only paying for the square footage and or the facility count that you're putting into that system, so that cost gets reduced substantially.

38:09

So uh Mr.

38:10

O'Rourke, and again, you can reach out to me if we want to discuss that again and further.

38:15

But there are definitely opportunities out there for you guys now that you have the baseline to jump up into one of these more adaptive systems that not only encompasses your facilities, but also your preventative maintenance and your uh consumable tracking, how many filters we're using for uh HVAC and how many belts and all the consumable costs, and then you can also get those wrapped up into a program that provides you with consumable costs per year per quarter, so that you can have those on an automatic procurement loop so that you know we're spending just for example, 250,000 a year on uh consumable rags or oil or filters, all the components that are needed to maintain your components so that you're not running them on a repair replacement cycle, but necessarily now you're preventing that um those issues from arising, which is inevitably increasing that bell curve again.

39:15

So now that you have your inventory, that's where you start, and then from there you go to the preventative maintenance side and the corrective action side at the same time, but eventually you graduate into a full-blown asset management plan, which uh from our discussions, Mr.

39:29

O'Rourke has a very in-depth understanding of it.

39:32

Sounds like he's got a pretty solid plan going forward.

39:35

Thank you.

39:35

And um, do you have any any other comments from the values?

39:39

One more question.

39:40

Sorry.

39:41

I have one more, but it's more of a comment than it is a question.

39:43

I was just gonna say, Director Shah, that this is something that I dreamed of for some of the public infrastructure in the city.

39:49

So if there's any way we can kind of think about leveraging something similar, it'd be cool.

39:53

So just putting it out there as a little plug.

39:55

You put on our right thank you.

39:57

And then just go ahead, Mr.

39:58

Penner.

39:58

Thank you.

40:00

Just so I understand from from the maintenance perspective right now currently like if if you're working on a children that kind of stuff are you do you have is there an asset tag to that device and then that links to how the maintenance schedule and history is in some software app or is it paper?

40:14

It's it's paper we do have our loose city work order tracking system which we could pull the history of of our repairs on any given unit um but that's the extent of what we could do at this current moment.

40:27

So I'm really excited about this opportunity to really want to take some time to thank uh AMGG for coming out and doing this assessment for us and I want to thank the public works team uh we're really in a position now where we could take a proactive approach and we're no longer having to guess on where to allocate our resources and try to figure out what needs repairs uh we have the data here we could come up with a short term plan medium term plan and a longer term plan uh so that's really gonna help us with our capital budgets and preparing our annual budgets going forward so just really want to thank everybody involved it's really good and really excited to have this data on hand.

41:06

Thank you thank you for the great pr um presentation do we have any comments from the dais I mean from the public any comments from the public if there's anything else that you would like to share before we um adjourn this meeting nope those are all the updates I have thank you.

41:26

Okay well at this point this meeting is adjourned thank you very much we're gonna start our city council meeting in five minutes um thank you um can I get on that or whatever because I can't hear very well okay she used to put for something to because we can hear yeah we can hear you we can hear you move around so I

Discussion Breakdown — Share of Meeting
Engineering And Infrastructure█████████████████████████████████████████████78%
Public Safety█████9%
Budget Equity Analysis████7%
Transportation Safety███6%
Summary of Proceedings

Allentown Public Works Committee Meeting - July 15, 2026

The Public Works Committee meeting on July 15, 2026, featured two main agenda items: a Bill to fund a pedestrian safety beacon using an AARP grant and a detailed presentation on a city-wide facility condition assessment.

Consent Calendar

  • Bill 49 was advanced to full council without public comment.

Public Comments & Testimony

  • No public comments were made.

Discussion Items

  • Bill 49 – Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon (RRFB) Installation: Director Shatter presented the $15,000 no-match AARP grant to install a pedestrian beacon on 14th Street between Tillman and Allen. The device will assist elderly residents crossing from Gross Towers to the shopping center, and students at Louis Ramos Elementary School. Vice President Mota expressed strong support, noting the street's heavy use and the importance of grant-funded projects. The bill was moved favorably to full council.

  • Facility Condition Assessment Presentation: Mr. O'Rourke (Facilities Manager) and David from AMGG presented the results of a $200,000 grant-funded assessment covering 76 city-owned buildings (over 635,000 square feet). The assessment, conducted over three months, used ASTM Uniformat II standards and a proprietary tool (inmo) to inventory components and assign condition ratings on a 9-point scale. Key findings include an overall Building Condition Index (BCI) of 81 (G-), with HVAC systems rated lower (73) as a priority. The 30-year capital expenditure projection shows a spike around 2030-2032, likely due to component replacements. The data is provided in detailed PDF reports and a filterable Excel flat file. ADA compliance checks were also completed at no extra cost. Mr. O'Rourke will develop a short-, medium-, and long-term plan based on the data. Council members discussed how to integrate the data into budgeting and procurement, and the possibility of a web-based asset management system. The presentation was well-received.

Key Outcomes

  • Bill 49 (Amending 2026 capital fund budget for RRFB installation) was moved favorably to full council by a unanimous voice vote.
  • The facility condition assessment report was formally received, and the administration will return to council with an implementation plan.
  • The meeting adjourned, with the City Council meeting to follow in five minutes.

Meeting date: July 15, 2026. Meeting time: 11:00 AM (approximate start).

Meeting Transcript

Hello, Candida. All right, we got you on board. We're about to start the public work. All right, thank you. Ready to go? Yep. Good evening. Welcome to public works committee meeting. And today we have um oh, I would like to say that everyone, um everyone is here. Mr. Hanlon, please read Bill 49. Bill 49 amends the 2026 capital fund budget to provide for an increase of fifteen thousand dollars to fund the purchase of a rectangular rapid flashing vegan crosswork warning sign to be installed at mid-block crossrock on fourteenth street between Allen and Tillman Street as part of the AARP community challenge grant the city was awarded, and that is at uh Gross Towers. Go ahead, Mr. Shatter. Yes, good evening, Vice President Mota, and thank you, members of council. Um what we're doing this evening is we're appropriating the funding that we received through the AARP grant. Uh it's fifteen thousand dollars to install a RRFB. I know it's a lot of words there, but uh it's a rectangular rapid flashing beacon device that will be installed on 14th Street between Tillman and Allen. Uh it's gonna really help the elderly um crossing from Gross Towers there into the shopping center. Uh we also have Louis Ramos Elementary School that's also in the area. Uh so having that flashing device there to assist pedestrians and the elderly in that area crossing to and from the school and getting into the shopping center and into gross towers is gonna be very essential, critical to their overall safety. Uh this is a no-match required grant, so it's a really cool project that we're looking forward to undertaking. I'm excited, I'm really am because um I I uh work very closely um with the senior citizens on uh 14th Street and uh and also the the the the students are gonna be benefiting a lot. Um yeah, it could be very dangerous that that street. So I'm glad I'm glad that we're um that we're doing this. And he's uh and he's heavily used. So yeah. Any comments from the Dais? No, I just kind of I know we don't have too many people here today, but I just can't reiterate enough how important some of these grants are. Um I know people sometimes feel like well we're spending money on this, spending money on that. This is money that we've been able to you know, we've earned and gotten from other sources that don't come from taxpayers that is being invested in our communities and and making it better for everyone who lives here. So um just another great instance of grant funding that helps us do great things. So thank you. And we would never say no to money, right? Absolutely. That is awesome. Okay, any other comments from the public no comments from the public. I would like someone to make a motion. I'll make a motion to forward to full council. Okay. I'll second it. Ms. Candida will second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. So Bill 49 will be moved. Uh favorably in front of full council. And now we have uh a presentation. Yes, that's correct.

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