Southold meetings returning to Town Hall after $141K in burst-pipe repairs

Southold Town Hall is finally getting back to normal — more than five months after a burst pipe caused extensive damage and displaced meetings and court proceedings.

The board will hold a work session at Town Hall on Tuesday, July 28, at 9 a.m., followed by its regular meeting at 6 p.m.

The return follows $141,000 in repairs to date, which Supervisor Al Krupski said were covered by insurance.

“We were lucky that we had a space to move into, which we will still use as a spillover meeting space,” Mr. Krupski told The Suffolk Times on Thursday. “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 work included replacing the meeting room ceiling and carpet, addressing damage in the records cellar and restoring the room’s audio system.

Since the flood, Town Board meetings have been held at the Town Hall Annex on Main Road and the Peconic Lane Community Center. Justice Court also operated from the community center before returning to Town Hall earlier this month. Only two court sessions were canceled immediately after the pipe burst.

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

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

All acoustic ceiling tiles were replaced, along with sheetrock on the wall adjacent to the failed pipe. The meeting room was repainted, the damaged section of pipe was replaced and new carpet was installed.

“A lot of credit goes to Southold 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.

Hallway carpeting is scheduled to be replaced within the next week, while restoration work remains underway 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.”

The pipe burst above the Town Hall meeting room Feb. 9 at around 3:30 p.m. Staff rushed to the records cellar after the pipe burst to protect paper copies of town documents from the water.

The disruption had consequences beyond relocating meetings and court proceedings. Officials said last month that it contributed to the town missing a deadline for a $900,000 state grant for improvements at Jean Cochran Park.

Southold had been seeking the funding through the state’s Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act. With a required 10% local match, the project would have cost nearly $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.