Malia Riggs
Elmore Autauga News
The Prattville-Autauga Public Library has been battling structural issues to the library building, causing the library to be closed for over a month. The Board heard from structural engineer Tim Sanford, Vice President of Day Structures in Prattville.
Sanford stated that he was contacted by Library Director Tammy Bear back in September with concerns about the west facing wall of the building, facing the garden. Other concerns at the time consisted of the wall leaning outward towards the garden and fitness floor outside the library.
“I conducted a structural evaluation of that area of the building. We also had available to us some of the original drawings of the building when it was constructed in the 70’s. After we evaluated the building and reviewed the existing drawings, we were able to determine that there were several deficiencies in the building, particularly in that area. Most notably, the wall had indeed tilted outward at the top significantly by several inches, and the floor had deflected at that area by several inches,” Sandford said.
The City of Prattville owns the library building, and Sanford confirmed that he is working with the city to develop some plans to repair the area both internally regarding the top of the wall connection to the roof as well as the foundation issues.
“It was our recommendation at that time that the area of the library, the main area of the library there, be closed for safety reasons, and also that the perimeter around that wall be closed until repairs could be done.” Sanford said.
Two contactors have been contacted to take a look at the job and to provide estimates, Sanford confirmed. Chairman of the Library Board, Ray Boles stated that it’s taking longer to find someone to fix the structural issues because a lot of the general contractors that are qualified to tackle this project are used to much larger scale projects than this.
Even with the setbacks, Boles brought the notion forward to create a Building Committee, where Boles stated he thinks that it’s imperative that they start working on the building of a new library in the city, however that will take years, Boles stated in the meeting Thursday night.
Boles confirmed that he has been in contact with an architect in Montgomery that would start the project pro-bono, and he has been in contact with several other individuals to get things started.
“The architect will work with us to put plans together and come up with a number. I’ve talked to several people that are congress aides and senator aides about getting federal funds and they’ve all said the same thing. They will not put any appropriations until you go out for every grant out there. Once you’ve gone out for all the grants and raised all that money, then you circle back to us (federal money), and say we need this amount of money to build this building. These are the plans for the building, and they could have appropriations. So, to get the ball rolling, we’re going to start putting a building committee together,” Boles said.
Boles stated he has talked to the county and the city and they might have a location in mind for a new Autauga-Prattville Public Library.
Boles made the motion to appoint board member Doug Darr, Gloria Kuykendall and himself to the Building Committee at this time with two other positions on the committee. Boles stated that one of the positions on the building committee will be filled by the City of Prattville and the other will be filled by the County, much like the system that is in place to appoint members to the Library Board.
