City hall will close Thursday and reopen only for next year’s
city council meetings, or until it piques the interest of a new
tenant or potential owner.
City hall will close Thursday and reopen only for next year’s city council meetings, or until it piques the interest of a new tenant or potential owner.
The offices and services currently housed in the building at 17555 Peak Ave. will be relocated in the nearby Development Services Center starting Jan. 4, 2012.
Utility billing, passport services, Mayor Steve Tate’s office, the city manager’s office, city attorney’s office, human resources, finance and community services administrative offices will move from the current city hall building to the DSC as of Jan. 4.
Staff will add “City Hall” to the sign in front of the building at 17575 Peak Ave., according to City Manager Ed Tewes.
All city offices will be closed due to the holiday furlough from Dec. 23 to Jan. 3. Limited services will be available at the DSC Jan. 3, but staff will mostly be unpacking and learning a new phone system.
The city council approved the move in September in order to save about $100,000 per year on costs to run the current building. Those savings would be achieved after the initial one-time moving cost of $275,000 is recovered, according to city staff.
Closing city hall was part of a larger effort to cut the city’s long-term costs overall, in the face of an uncertain revenue picture, an impending “continuation fee” of $9.8 million from the redevelopment agency to the state, and change the way the city delivers public services.
Tate said he is excited about having everyone from the various administrative city departments under one roof again.
“I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be great to get everybody back together and work more as a team,” Tate said.
Development related services, as well as services traditionally offered at city hall, have been cut in recent years, allowing room for the two facilities to consolidate, city staff said.
Both city buildings were built in 1976 with a voter-approved general obligation bond issue, Tewes said. The DSC was remodeled in 2007. They are each approximately 14,000 square feet.
City council meetings will continue to be held at the current city hall building until June 2012. After that, they will likely move to the Community and Cultural Center at 17000 Monterey Road, Tewes said.
In the long run, the city plans to either sell or lease the current city hall building to a private entity. Fleeting interest in the building has been shown by “a couple schools and churches,” Tewes said, but the city has not yet begun a serious marketing push on the building.
Leasing the building could generate up to $75,000 per year, according to a city staff report produced in September.
Although the validity of the $9.8 million “ransom” or RDA continuation fee is currently the subject of litigation in the state Supreme Court, the council agreed to make the payoff to the state in order to continue its redevelopment plans. Those plans mostly include rehabilitating a number of properties the agency purchased in downtown Morgan Hill in recent years.
Cutting city hall costs was part of the council’s effort to save the cash necessary for the payment. If the Supreme Court upholds the state’s budget which redirects a total of $1.7 billion of statewide redevelopment resources to more basic services this year, the Morgan Hill agency will have to make its first payment next month.
