Hastings City employees relocate to temporary office space

HASTINGS, Neb. — Hastings City employees will now call the building at the southeast corner of the Landmark Center their place of work.

NEW TEMPORARY OFFICE FOR HASTINGS CITY HALL EMPLOYEES

The move was strongly recommended by the city’s Environmental Director Marty Stange who back in March determined the current City Hall building was unsafe due to large amounts of mold and asbestos.

HASTINGS CITY OFFICIAL URGES STAFF TO RELOCATE DUE TO ‘MOLD AND ASBESTOS INFECTION’

“We’ve been in the building for two weeks working on it and getting it prepped,” said Erik Nielsen, Hastings IT Director.

Nielsen said he and his team have been in the building two weeks prior to test out the Wi-Fi.

Nielsen said the city has plans to introduce a new networking infrastructure, that’ll be tested out in the temporary space.

“We’ve been redesigning the network infrastructure for the last couple of weeks, but due to supply chain issues, we haven’t been able to implement that we have enough parts to do this building so it’s been kind of a testing ground to build our network design,” said Nielsen.

The building is a little over 3,000 sq. ft. and it’ll house the city’s administration and finance employees.

The city signed a two-year lease agreement and will pay $48,840 each year in monthly installments of $4,070.

At the conclusion of the two-year lease, the city has the option to extend the lease for one year at a rate of $51,300 payable in monthly installments.

Funds for the temporary relocation are included in the city budget.

Accounting Assistant Brittany Powell said the move hasn’t changed much of the day-to-day operations, but it’s been a push for something else.

“We’ve kind of been forced to go through all of our own files and scan whatever needs to be shredded so it’s kind of been a good excuse for us to clean up,” said Powell.

Repairs to the roof and mold removal are in the works for the current City Hall building.

And despite the employees moving out, city council meetings will continue at City Hall for now.

“Employees are in that building eight to nine hours a day five days a week, whether it be council meetings or the planning commission, those folks are in there one to two hours at a time so there’s less of an exposure when you’re talking about board meetings than with city employees,” said Hastings Public Information Manager Tony Herrman.

Herrman said the city is also in the process of setting up temporary Hastings City Council chambers in the Hastings Municipal Airport terminal building at 3300 W. 12th St.

Moving of the city’s Developmental Services employees will start next week at the Yost Ave. building.