STARKVILLE — Philip Carter turns off the portable air conditioner in his office in the Starkville Public Library before joining a Zoom.
In just 45 minutes, the library’s director said, the room temperature shot up to 83 degrees.
And the discomfort extends across the building at the corner of University Drive and South Montgomery Street.
All three of the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning units are kaput, leaving the work of cooling the facility to nine portable air conditioners and several strategically-placed fans. Those provide “at least a little bit of relief,” Carter said.
Workers have even covered the building’s front windows in a desperate effort to rebuke the rays from the afternoon sun.
“Thankfully we haven’t hit the dreaded summer heat yet,” Carter wrote in an email to The Dispatch. “… Patrons, for the most part, have been very understanding and thankfully it’s not gotten excessively warm.”
But for the library that sees more than 50,000 visitors per year, summer is right around the corner — “easily” the library’s busiest time Carter said, with expanded programming, especially for youth who are out of school. The summer reading program alone draws about 5,000 participants, he said.
Both the city and the Tennessee Valley Authority are stepping up to help the library, but it could be months, maybe even early next year, before the building has a fully functional HVAC system.
That could mean closing the library in the afternoons this summer or moving programming off site, Carter said. At the very least, the library might start providing cold water and hand fans to patrons braving the heat.
“We want to make our services available to everyone, but we can’t have people coming into a building that’s 85 or 90 degrees,” Carter said. “… Our bigger concern is if we don’t get HVAC soon, we’ll need to contract an emergency services company like ServPro or Paul Davis to bring in industrial dehumidifiers to keep our collection from being susceptible to mold. If the mold starts and we’re unable to get it dry enough in here to kill it, we could lose the entire collection and conservatively that could be upwards of an estimated $1.5 million loss.”
How this happened
The library has three HVAC units — a 30-ton, 15-ton and 2.5-ton unit, respectively. All are “well past their end-of-life expectancy.”
They started to show it over the winter.
The 15-ton unit went out in November, followed by the 30-ton unit needing repairs in December and failing outright in late March. The smallest unit made it to early April before it died.
Though Starkville and Oktibbeha County fund operations for all three libraries in the city-county system, the city owns the downtown Starkville location and is responsible for repairs.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said the city was trying to bank money specifically to tackle the library’s ailing HVAC system by next year, but now it doesn’t have the luxury to wait.
“We’ve been nursing them along for a while,” Spruill told The Dispatch. “We knew it was going to happen, but we didn’t anticipate them all going at once. … I hate that it happened. … We were just hoping we’d make it another year. Sadly, we didn’t.”
TVA, through a conservation and sustainability partnership it has with the city, is expected to replace the 15-ton and 2.5-ton units, Spruill said, absorbing the full cost of what will likely exceed $40,000 for parts and labor. She hopes those units could be in place in a month or so.
The city will shoulder the 30-ton unit, which Spruill said would cost at least $250,000, an unbudgeted expense that will be paid from the city’s operating fund reserves.
She and Carter estimated it could be three to nine months before the large unit is installed.
“We don’t know until we know (on the price),” Spruill said. “Also, we don’t know about (deliverability). Right now, people are having trouble getting units and that sort of thing.”
In the meantime, Spruill said the city is working with the library to find alternative programming locations for summer programs, especially if the TVA units are delayed or don’t do enough to cool the facility.
She said the Sportsplex and police department community room could be options, and the city also plans to approach the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection — right across the street from the library — about its meeting space.
Carter said he’s grateful for the city stepping up.
“It’s a large, expensive project and takes some time because of red tape but we’re thankful for their support and making this repair a priority,” he said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 40 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
