Council staff sent home

More than 200 Tauranga City Council staff are unable to enter their workplace today following the discovery of black mould in the building.

The entire first floor of the Willow Street building is closed and areas of the ground floor are also out of bounds.


Tauranga City Council's Willow Street headquarters.

When staff arrived for work this morning they were met with closed off entrances and directed to staff briefings at Baycourt at 8am and 8.30am.

At total of 219 affected employees were told whether or not alternative workspaces had been arranged.

The closed-off areas are now officially hazardous, and a notice to staff sent out on Sunday says essential work items will have to be cleaned before being returned for use.

The ground floor Customer Service Centre and Library are both open for business as usual, while council staff await test results for both areas. The call centre on the ground floor came back clean.

The council chambers also remain open for meetings, but test results for that area are also expected.

Currently there are no planned changes to Council opening hours or service. The council's phone, website and customer service centre continue to be the first points of contact for customers.

Security passes have been disabled for all physical works contractors, who now have to check in at reception and be escorted by staff.

In total, 169 staff have been evacuated from the first floor. The affected teams include City Waters, Emergency Management, Health & Safety, Open Space, Finance, Property, Transformation, Legal and ICT.

It also includes Asset Delivery staff who were relocated last week. A further 36 staff were evacuated from the ground floor from Building Inspections, Plan Processing and Environmental Monitoring.

'We are still in the process of arranging suitable alternative work sites for around 200 staff,” says communications advisor Marcel Currin.

Even if staff are allocated new locations, it may be a day or two before normal work resumes and the first move might not be the last.

'We should all be prepared for this disruption to last many weeks,” adds Marcel. 'Fixing the problem is likely to take a long time.”

Any staff who have health concerns should visit their GP or specialist and Council will reimburse costs.

Marcel says: 'We understand that there will be a lot of questions about how this happened. Questions about the building maintenance and historical issues will be addressed thoroughly, but for now our priority is on the current situation.”

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11 comments

Move out for good.

Posted on 15-12-2014 09:15 | By The author of this comment has been removed.

Now may be the time to move out of the CBD, rent a building out of the CBD, or work from home. This may also open a can of worms for other buildings - IRD, WINZ, etc. Where does it stop?


Welcome...

Posted on 15-12-2014 11:03 | By penguin

...to the Black Mould Club that includes many schools and homes that have had to live with and deal to mould for months or years! I wonder where the buck stops this time? Didn't the TCC HQ have a big renovation not all that long ago?


SO THERE IS A GOD

Posted on 15-12-2014 11:14 | By ROCCO

Yay Wonderful the toxic mould did the job Councillors didn't have the balls to address namely culled 200 staff exactly the number a staff and systems audit would have axed. Now we have the desired result don't let them back into the place. WTF


Move council to K Road

Posted on 15-12-2014 14:39 | By The Tomahawk Kid

Well said ROCCO. They will be doing their very best work (ie nothing) for this period of time. I suggest (as Big Ted mentioned) to relocate to a less expensive facility out of the town centre. Sell the expensive real estate, to repay debt. I suggest somewhere along K Road (Route K) where they can also help reduce debt by paying the road toll every day (after all, they are the ones responsible for it.)


Get independent advice

Posted on 15-12-2014 16:48 | By Annalist

Is it really that bad? How do people get on in third world countries where there are real problems?


Shut it down

Posted on 15-12-2014 20:14 | By YOGI BEAR

Walk away and be pleased about it. In my opinion the mould has more culture than the existing in residence muppits.


Pengiun

Posted on 15-12-2014 20:39 | By YOGI BEAR

Yes there was a few years ago, the problem was there then and well known but ignored, I would think that in every sense of the word, the bug has well and truly escaped.


Tomahawk Kid

Posted on 16-12-2014 00:40 | By YOGI BEAR

Very good advice there, if only such an obvious, practical and realistic thing would happen. In fact the rule for TCC staff would be that I don't care where you live you have to go through the Route K tolls and pay twice a day. That will work fine until 30/6/15 when TCC offload it, then they can go and used a bicycle is the only way then after.


smoke screen

Posted on 16-12-2014 09:13 | By The Tomahawk Kid

This is all probably just a smoke screen in an effort to prove that they need a new flash building paid for courtesy of . . .! - we all know who.


re locate

Posted on 18-12-2014 14:36 | By rosscoo

TCC could always go back to Barkes Corner and share offices with Western bay council.


make up a story?

Posted on 18-12-2014 16:42 | By YOGI BEAR

Demo the building, get a new one and no evidence of anything after that, sounds so easy.


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