Council begins process of selling city hall | Local News | #citycouncil


City council took its first steps to sell the city hall building this week.

City hall, at 230 N. Jefferson St., has just 11 employees and yearly upkeep costs are about $90,000, not including about $1.1 million needed to upgrade the roof and boiler system. To save money, a plan is in the works to relocate city hall operations into space on the first floor of the city-owned New Castle Public Library building.

Council, at its meeting Thursday, agreed to seek bids for the building.

Councilmen Bryan Cameron and Patsy Cioppa said the bid process is simply to look to see if anyone is interested in acquiring the city hall building, with council having the authority to reject any and all bids.

City residents Lorraine Golden and Devin Maresca expressed their disapproval with the proposal, stating they believe city hall should be its own separate building and not a part of the library.

“I’ve never seen a city without a city hall,” Golden said.

Cioppa said it is not feasible for administration to stay in the current building.

The lone employees working out of city hall are the administration, city clerk, solicitors and the finance and code enforcement departments.

The library board of trustees approved Director Andrew Henley to begin negotiations with the city and begin analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and potential threats of this proposal. According to Henley, the library’s elevator being down for five to six months while waiting for repairs and temporarily relocating all services and programs to the first floor doesn’t impact the ongoing negotiations.

In other business, council approved demolition contracts with Edinburg-based Siegel Excavating LLC, at $40,500 and $75,800, respectively.

The $40,500 is for regular demolitions that will paid using the city’s capital improvement budget, while the $75,800 is for Community Development Block Grant demolitions using CDBG funding.

nvercilla@ncnewsonline.com


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