CHARLOTTESVILLE (WINA) – Charlottesville City Hall will be closed for a while because of extensive damage from a water leak, and there is significant impact. Buford Middle School is also closed to any public access after a leak from the weekend torrential downpours inundated the band and orchestra rooms there. Unlike Buford where impact is low on the public because no programs are happening there because of an extensive renovation going on there, impact with City Hall on the public is significant.

City Manager Sam Sanders, still working Monday in his capacity in his old position of Deputy City Manager for Operations, said at the end of last night’s City Counci meeting the City Hall leak took up a good portion of his Monday. He said the lobby is unusable, and there’s no public access “while we work on a plan for allowing the public to re-engage with city services”.

He says they’ve been working on setting up a front desk for the Treasurer’s Office in the city Parks & Rec office. They’re also working on setting up a Commissioner of the Revenue desk in the upper level of the Downtown Transit Center. An announcement is expected at some point today (Tuesday) as to what time those services will be restored. He says staff will be working remotely for the next couple of days.

Sanders said a professional cleaning team began working on-site Monday, and they’re fortunate the water was potable. But he says the site will be treated.

“We’ll have to replace carpet, we probably lost equipment as well because this was all weekend this was occurring,” Sanders said.

He said the money for repairs will come out of the CIP contingency, and an agent is sending over an adjuster Tuesday. The agent will come back, as well, after staff finishes pulling things out. He expects they’ll find other damage behind things.

City Council Monday night at the end of the meeting approved a $1.5-million appropriation which Sanders says is needed to get things underway. He expects that money will be ultimately reimbursed by insurance minus a $25,000 deductible. Sanders said no money needs to be appropriated for the Buford Middle repairs because that will be taken care of with the funds being used for the school renovation that has been underway for more than a month.