Official apologizes to engineer, retracts charge plans were flawed, Ketcham says senior kitchen renovation can get underway soon

Highway Superintendent Mark Ketcham publicly apologized to engineer Matt Sherman at the Town Board work session on Tuesday for having cited Mr. Sherman’s plans the week before as a reason for a delay in renovating the Senior Activity Center kitchen to bring it into compliance with the county health code. Mr. Ketcham, totally retracting his previous assertions, said site work and renovations could begin soon.

Mr. Ketcham acknowledged that he had worked with Mr. Sherman to determine how the project should proceed and that any problems he had mentioned at the Town Board work session on October 13 could be resolved with no adjustments or new approvals required for the plans.

“I’ve kind of misspoken and I apologize for that,” Mr. Ketcham said Tuesday. “His plans were not flawed.”

He said that when he went to talk to “companies” about doing the work, he did so “not knowing the time Matt put in with the health department to do it a certain way because of the layout of the building.”

Mr. Ketcham has said he had talked with plumbing contractor Will Anderson and builder-excavator Peder Larsen about the project.

“If I tarnished or upset Mr. Sherman, I do apologize for that,” Mr. Ketcham said. The kitchen work “is still doable the way it is. I have to convince the contractors this is the way we want to do it.”

Mr. Ketcham said last week that what Mr. Sherman’s plans “showed as grade for the cesspools doesn’t work.” The installation of a septic system, grease trap and other utilities can’t be done without digging a 24-foot deep “hole the length of that side of the building,” which would “ruin the integrity of the building” and destabilize the driveway. “That’s the main flaw,” Mr. Ketcham said. He had mentioned there were other problems but did not explain them.

In an email sent to the Reporter, Mr. Ketcham and other officials early this week, Mr. Sherman wrote that the plans Mr. Ketcham had called “seriously flawed” were the same plans that had been “reviewed and accepted by Mark and reviewed and approved by Suffolk County Health Department.”

Mr. Sherman, who now lives with his family in St. Croix where he is continuing his work as a civil engineer, wrote there was no flaw in the plans and that the grade that Mr. Ketcham had cited as an issue “was determined based upon a topographic survey provided to me by the town. This survey was prepared by a professional land surveyor. The plan, as is typical, provided for an estimated final grade at or near the existing grade in the area of the proposed work. An estimate is made because the final grade can deviate 6 inches or more depending on site conditions.”

Noting that Mr. Ketcham had said at the October 13 work session that excavating to put in the septic system would “ruin the integrity of the building,” he wrote that “the applicable codes” require a 10-foot separation from a septic system to a foundation and his plan met that requirement.

“If the construction is done correctly by a competent contractor, no impact will be felt by nearby structures” or the driveway, he wrote. Noting that it is common for drywells — which are similar to a septic system — to be installed immediately adjacent to roadways, he wrote, “Again, if proper construction techniques are practiced by a competent contractor, impacts of construction can be kept to a minimum.”

“That is not to say that installations in this type of situation are easy, as they are not,” Mr. Sherman added. “Tight spaces may require special excavation techniques such as cutting rings or shoring. No doubt they add complexity (which translates to extra time and cost) to the project. However these types of practices are routinely done in such situations.  This is the reason I had advocated to upgrade the existing system near the entrance to the Senior Center, rather than installing a new one between the building and driveway.”

Also last week, Mr. Ketcham mentioned an “additional problem was the waste line from the dishwasher,” wrote Mr. Sherman. “He stated that the waste line was shown too high. His confusion does not equate to a flaw (serious or not) in the plans. The dishwasher has a drain line at or near the bottom which in a typical installation would be near the floor level. Mark and I had discussed installing the dishwasher in an elevated position because it solved the drain height problem and we also felt a higher installation would make it easier to load and unload the dishwasher …  Even if Mark changed his mind and decided that he wanted the dishwasher on the floor, that is not a flaw in the plans.”

After his apology, Mr. Ketcham told the Town Board on Tuesday that he would be meeting on October 25 with the engineer recommended by Mr. Sherman to assist his former clients here, John Condon of Mattituck, to go over the details of the kitchen project.

Mr. Ketcham guessed the work might take about four or five weeks to complete. “I am gathering prices to get the job done and move forward,” he said.

“The funds graciously given to the Senior Activity Center are being utilized in the correct manner,” Mr. Ketcham added.

As Mr. Ketcham outlined it Tuesday, the work first calls for installing a new 330-gallon overhead oil tank connecting through the drop ceiling to the oil burner; cleaning and removing an old buried oil tank; putting in a new septic system and grease trap system and installing new plumbing as well as a new dishwasher and refrigerator. A hand-washing sink is also to be installed.

Mr. Ketcham said the driveway to the medical building, where the Senior Activity Center is located, would have to be blocked for about three or four days for the site work. He said he would work with Dr. Peter Kelt, who also has an office in the building, to do the work at the least disruptive time.

The county Department of Health Services has barred the town from using the kitchen to prepare hot meals for its Silver Circle Wednesday lunch program until it is upgraded to meet the health code.

Mr. Sherman, who was in private practice with his own firm on Shelter Island, is now with Malcolm Pernie/Arcadis  in St. Croix, where he will become a project manager. The firm handles projects including groundwater mitigation, stormwater control and air emission control.

The kitchen work, for which Mr. Sherman drew up plans in 2010, will be funded by the Shelter Island Senior Citizens Foundation’s grant of $8,000 for appliance upgrades. The Lions Club Foundation is donating $2,500 as well as at least some of the record proceeds from its recent annual scallop dinner at the Pridwin.

With $41,000 expected in federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) block grants accrued since 2009, according to Councilwoman Christine Lewis, the town should be able to do the work without hitting taxpayers with any of the bill. The last estimate for the overall project was about $53,000.