Southold meetings moving back to Town Hall after over $140K in burst pipe repairs

Southold board meetings are finally moving back to Town Hall, more than five months after a burst pipe forced officials to relocate the Town Board meetings and close Justice Court in February.

Board meetings were being held in the Town Hall Annex on Main Road and the Peconic Lane Community Center in Peconic. Justice Court has been back in Town Hall for over a week.

The burst pipe caused about a third of the ceiling to come down. Supervisor Al Krupski said the repairs — which were covered by insurance — cost $141,000. Necessary repairs included the meeting hall ceiling, meeting hall rug, and records cellar ceiling. 

“We were lucky that we had a space to move into, which we will still use as a spillover meeting space,” Mr. Krupski said. “All the departments functioned very well; I have to give everybody credit. They all pivoted very quickly and very efficiently to keep serving the public.”

The initial phase of repairs focused on remediating the water damage, including removing the carpet and sheetrock from the affected walls and ceiling.

Southold DPW Director Erick Haas said the damage also extended to the meeting room’s audio system, requiring the replacement of two speakers and a specialized ceiling-mounted microphone located above the table used for work sessions.

All acoustic ceiling tiles in the meeting room were also replaced, along with new sheetrock on the wall adjacent to the pipe failure. The entire meeting room was also repainted.

The damaged section of the pipe was replaced, too.

The meeting room carpet has been replaced, and the hallway carpet is scheduled to be replaced within the next week.

“Further restoration work remains in the basement. Water reached the vault and storage room, damaging the double-layer sheetrock ceilings,” Mr. Haas said. “Building code requires these rooms to have two layers of 5/8-inch sheetrock because of the volume of paper records stored there. Once those ceiling repairs are complete, the records will be returned to the vault and storage room, and the restoration project will be complete.”

Southold Town Board will hold its first work session back there on Tuesday, July 28 at 9 a.m. The board’s regular session will be later the same day at 6 p.m.

“A lot of credit goes to Souhtold Town DPW because they did a tremendous amount of work the day of the flood, and they oversaw the restoration along the way,” Mr. Krupski said.

The pipe burst above the Town Hall meeting room Monday, Feb. 9, at around 3:30 p.m. Town staff rushed to the records cellar below the meeting room to make sure paper copies of town documents were minimally damaged.

Aside from just relocating meetings, town officials said last month that it contributed to missing a deadline for a state grant of nearly $1 million for improvements at Jean Cochran Park.

Southold had been seeking up to $900,000 through the state’s Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, with a 10% local match that would have brought the project close to $1 million. The proposal called for adding permanent bathrooms, expanding and paving the parking area, installing fitness equipment, and potentially removing the park’s aging roller hockey rink.