DANVILLE — A few offices within the Danville City Hall have been relocated because of storm-related roof damage.
During the public works meeting on Tuesday, decisions were made to move the legal and inspector’s offices temporarily to the Danville Public Works building at 1155 E. Voorhees St. The comptroller and the account specialist’s offices have been moved to an office on the first floor of City Hall.
“We don’t know exactly how long it will take. We have put out a bid for the roof,” Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. said. “We’ve requested emergency proposals for the roof.”
Williams says the issues with the roof were going on before he became mayor in 2018, prior to Vermilion Advantage moving out of the city building.
“There’s water infiltration in the west wall in both the comptroller and also our reconcilers office, to make a long story short, in order to make sure that we keep people safe, we need to remediate the situation,” Williams said.
Williams added the city should be receiving another bid soon.
“They’re going to move some things around for us to be able to fix the roof, but it will likely take four to six weeks before they’re able to get here,” Williams added. “Once they’re here, it will take them approximately a week to actually complete the roof. We will, once everything is done, do another cleaning upstairs and also another air assessment, just to be sure that we have remediated all the mold appropriately, and to keep our team members safe.”
Ward 7 Alderman Doug Ahrens asked the mayor if the assessors had looked at the elevations around the utility penetrations.
“I mean, that was previously, at least, that was one of the biggest factors that we were seeking,” Ahrens said.
Williams said “they have looked into it and it’s at a point where it can no longer be repaired, and that’s why it has to be replaced
“It will not cost us to have to lose H-VAC, so we’ll be able to, unless something crazy happens. We’ll be able to continue providing service to the citizens overall, as expected.”
This move comes after torrential downpours of rain earlier this month left the city and the surrounding areas dealing with several inches of water in a short amount of time.
Ward 5 Alderman Eve Ludwig asked about the offices moving during their June 9 meeting. She said she and Ward 3 Alderman/Vice Chair Sharon Pickering were concerned by what they saw.
“The things that we saw, the roof caving in, in areas, tiles just curved from water damage, legal files that had been damaged from water, and then videos of the servers in it that were saved,” Ludwig said. “I’m concerned about what potential damage could happen next time we have rain come in, and what if somebody’s not there to protect the servers?”
At that time, David Ruwe, Public Works Director, said they had put in place “temporary preventative measures” to prevent damage.
Ward 1 Alderman Ed Butler also asked during the June 9 meeting if the building is even “worth fixing.”
“It’s because our employees are living in, or working in, a hazardous condition,” Butler said. “So we don’t actually know when we’re moving out of this building…”
The City of Danville purchased the Old National Bank building, located at 2 W. Main Street, in 2024 for the intended purpose of someday moving city hall across the street.