Half done: Soap Lake struggles to finish remodeling city hall

SOAP LAKE — As Soap Lake Mayor Alex Kovach stands in the middle of the city’s empty city hall, he looks up at the underside of the roof.

“I could point out the 2-by-12 full-length rafter for the roof there,” he said. “Try to find lumber like that these days.”

The floors are bare, as are some of the cinder blocks left over from the original construction in 1970. Flexible piping hangs from bare heating ducts, and the floor is little more than rough concrete.

Soap Lake’s city hall was completely gutted in 2019 after mold — created when a second roof was added to a portion of the city hall in such a way as to trap moisture — combined with rodent droppings and debris left over from a previous fire, created a “toxic fume smell” Kovach said drove employees out into the portable units they occupy today.

“Staff said, ‘Oh, we can’t work here,’” he said.

However, even with all that, Kovach notes the city hall is “a decent shell of building” Soap Lake would truly love to use as its city hall again.

“We’ve got current connections to water and to plumbing, it’s just a matter of reactivating those,” he said. “The first phase is just getting staff out of the office over here and into a place with running water and a bathroom.”

That’s necessary because the portable toilets the city has been using can get a little cold in the winter, Kovach said. A recent accident, which shorted out the space heater used to warm one of the big blue units, didn’t help matters.

“Things are warming up, but yeah, it’s a cold process to use the Porta-Potty,” Kovach said.

But there is the matter of cost. The city council budgeted $250,000 from the proceeds of a special bond sale for the first phase of city hall renovations. However, Kovach said the initial bids all came in well above that — closer to $650,000.

It has forced the cash-strapped city to look hard at its options, Kovach said, including the possibility of moving into a pre-fabricated building as a city hall, as a backup option for staff anxious to get back into a place with running water and a toilet. It’s something neither Kovach nor the city council wants to do, but at a recent city council meeting, the city council is giving serious thought to the matter.

During a March 3 regular meeting, City Administrator Nic Tijerina said he received a quote for around $170,000 for a 1,400-square-foot pre-fabricated building — similar to the current police department — that would be connected to sewer and water and would become Soap Lake’s new city hall.

However, that would likely force Soap Lake to demolish at least a portion of the existing building, and would still require the former city council chambers — which are also gutted — to be remodeled before they could be used.

“It doesn’t have to be some spectacular building,” said council member Andrew Arnold. “We need to get something more permanent for those who are working there.”

While the city is going to get a more solid quote on a modular building, Kovach is concerned tearing down the existing building and buying a prefabricated structure would not save the city significant money. He was also concerned it would rob Soap Lake of some of its history.

“My experience tells me that going through that process and losing all the history and all the existing foundations and walls, and it’s a step backwards in my mind,” said the mayor, who is also an architect, during an interview several days before the council meeting.

It doesn’t help last year, the Washington State Auditor’s Office found significant problems with Soap Lake’s financial management in an audit of the city’s finances and accounting methods for January 2017 through December 2018.

The auditor found the city did not adequately monitor its spending to ensure it was within budget, was $60,000 over budget in the limited obligation bond fund used to pay for the remediation and remodeling of city hall, and was at risk of not meeting all of its financial obligations.

“That’s why I’m really tough on the budget,” said Kovach, who was elected mayor in 2019. “I think in other projects, without the full planning ahead, that’s how those cost overruns happen. We’re in so far, we have to keep going.”

“We can’t afford to be in a position like that anymore,” he added.

Which is why city hall still sits empty. Kovach said the city is looking at other options, such as a very basic remodel of a small portion of the building — a bathroom, an office or two — enough to get employees inside.

Kovach said the city has also reached out to 12th District Rep. Keith Goehner, R-Cashmere, and Rep. Mike Steele, R-Chelan, (Soap Lake is in the state’s 12th Legislative District) to see if they can tap into a local community project fund and help defray some or all of the cost of renovating city hall. The results of that request should be known this month, Kovach said.

He’s even offered to volunteer to do some of the needed work of tearing down the remaining inside walls to cut costs.

“Because that takes no skill, and some of this stuff needs to go away before they can get in and do the electrical and all that,” Kovach said.

Even with the huge price tag looming over the project, Kovach said the building is worth saving. Soap Lake is a community where people like to gather and meet in person, Kovach said, and the city hall has the space for that.

“We meet in the school library, and we make it work, but it would be nice to have an official place to meet,” he said. “There’s a lot of great opportunity in this space, and we don’t want to lose those opportunities by tearing it all down.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.