The Cornelius City Council held a work session at 6 p.m. focusing on a city facilities condition assessment and media training, followed by a regular session at 7 p.m. The regular session included recognitions, a Civic Leadership Academy capstone report, a quarterly strategic plan update, a GFOA Triple Crown award announcement, a council vacancy timeline, appointments, a public hearing, and resolutions. All votes were unanimous unless noted.
The City Council meeting for Monday, July 6, 2026. Our work session is at 6 p.m. tonight, and we're focused on the city facilities condition assessment. And that's a staff presentation, multiple members here. So Peter Brandman, Susan Rush. So please introduce it. Okay, thank you, Mayor and Council. So as we've been telling you for a long time, we uh finally got done with our facility condition assessment, which we did in place of a facility master plan because we have basically enough facilities, and we have some build-out plans for the public works compound and some future remodeling of some of our existing buildings. But what we didn't know was what the condition of our buildings that we own were in. A lot of jurisdictions have been going to the facility condition assessments so that they can start planning and putting in money into their CIP to take on those repairs. Kind of like buying a home, you have the money for your down payment, you get in there, and all of a sudden the HVAC goes out, roof needs replaced, whatever, and you're hit with unexpected expenses. So I wanted to start off before I go into the all the slides to just let you know that the numbers are kind of shocking, but this is just a tool to let us know where the buildings are at, what kind of repairs they've identified that are critical, non-critical. Um they did it on a 20-year planning horizon. Um a lot of jurisdictions are moving to these condition assessments, and so what our consultant told us, which was Saison, is that we're not unique. Um it's just you know, a lot of deferred maintenance that happens over the years. Um it's really just a tool to look at managing our buildings and uh the best use of our finances. It gives us a starting point. We can use the tool then to keep an eye on maintenance or troubleshoot uh trouble spots, and then we can re-evaluate the priority list as we need to. Sometimes they might have identified an end of life on a particular element as maybe 10 years out, but we might be able to patch it by and get by for 15 years, so that's something we can constantly look at. Um, some of the documents in your packet that were provided to you was a heat map, which just gives a little visual assessment of major categories for each of the facilities, and those were on a rating scale of one to five in there. And then each of those main categories were broke down in the second document, just gives a little more information on those. Um so I wanted to provide that to you so that you can kind of understand where some of these um repair costs are coming in at. So the first thing we want to go through is um a little more in the purpose and the scope. Um this is going to support the city's asset management objectives, including establishing a consistent baseline of asset condition data, identifying major maintenance needs, and short to midterm capital planning. Um the systems that were evaluated were the building envelope, which includes the siding, roof, windows, exterior doors, lighting, parking lots, and sidewalks. There was also the interior, which are your typical walls, doors, floors, stairwells, um, stair finishes, uh, ceilings, elevators, and interior lighting. Um they also evaluated structural for foundations and walls and columns and supports if they were present. They looked at HVAC, electrical, including solar and generators, plumbing systems, utility connections being your electric gas and water, and the door access points, and then accessibility for ADA requirements and necessary improvements. The methodology they used was a rapid visual assessment. They didn't use any destructive measures at this point, and when they go into a building, they look from ceiling and work down. Then they go outside, get up on the roof, look at that, and work down the building. Um they used a standard uniform system, which is the uniform at level three, which is a little more in-depth. It's a five rating scale, five being the most intensive. So they used a pretty good level in there. They looked at assets assigned, condition ratings, estimated remaining useful life, replacement costs, and then uh criticality to facility operations. In the corrective actions categories, they used um they looked at critical repairs, non-critical repairs, and then functional improvements, current code, and then standard conditions. Some items were grandfathered in their current condition. Unless there's substantial work that gets undertaken, then those might need to be reevaluated and brought up to current code standards. On the condition ratings, they used a scale of one being excellent to five unsatisfactory, and that's indicated on the heat map that shows the broad categories. The cost estimating was completed by a third-party cost and construction management firm that was very familiar with the Pacific Northwest, and they provided the cost modeling. The FCI, which is the facility condition index, is the corrective actions from 2026 through 2030, and they take that and add it to the predicted renewals 2031 to 2035, divide that by the current replacement value, and then that gives them an FCI on each building. And in those categories, you have good, fair, poor, and very poor. Lower FCI reflexive facility in better condition with the lower maintenance needs and associated costs. Then they also looked at the current replacement value, and that is based on the cost model for the use type of each building and the factors, the cost models estimated cost per square foot by gross square foot of each building. It does include cost markups to reflect full design and construction costs for the current year's construction market. However, it does not include the escalation factor nor demolition costs of current building. The primary use of modeling CRVs for buildings is to calculate the facility condition index for benchmarking purposes. So when they looked at this and we look at all of the information, it's very consistent building to building. So it really lets us know where we need to focus on. And then with that, we can move into the CIP planning.