Ups and downs at the Hall

As everyone who hits a certain age is well aware, passing a 50^th birthday can bring with it certain physical indignities.

The county Hall of Administration, at 51, is no exception.

A recent spate of mishaps—including staffers getting stuck in elevators and a flood that doused three county supervisors’ offices—has brought some of the building’s maintenance challenges into sharp relief.

The county’s Internal Services Department, responding to a series of questions raised by supervisors at their May 17 meeting, explained that the water leak that flooded parts of the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th District supervisorial offices on May 13 was caused by “routine maintenance work to replace heating and air conditioning water coils located above the 8^th floor ceiling.” Maintenance routines are being reviewed to avoid a repeat performance.

As for those elevators, ISD responded to the supervisors’ publicly-aired gripes by rewiring the audible alarm system in the cars so that they now ring at the Hall’s 2^nd floor sheriff’s station. Previously, the alarms could be heard only in the halls immediately outside the elevator.  (The elevator cars also have “in-cab” telephones to reach the county operator.)

Routing the alarms to the sheriff’s station “should improve response time to entrapment incidents,” ISD director Tom Tindall said in a memo to supervisors this week. He also said the Hall’s 11 elevators, which include private elevators used by top county officials, are up to code and inspected regularly by the county, in addition to annual state inspections.

Some 2,700 county employees and several hundred visitors are in the Hall on any given workday. Since June 1, 2010, seven of them have reported getting stuck in the elevators, according to the county’s work order tracking system. And some of the unlucky seven have had VIP bosses.

“My staff member was stuck in there over an hour,” Supervisor Don Knabe said. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who said his staff also had been stranded in the elevators in recent weeks, asked for a report on what it would cost to upgrade the elevator equipment at the Hall of Administration and the Stanley Mosk Courthouse.

“I know those of us who’ve served on jury duty…have a very difficult time getting to the court because you wait a lifetime for the elevator,” Antonovich said.

Estimates for replacing the elevator equipment will be submitted to supervisors by June 15, Tindall said.

Posted 5/24/11