DURING THIS MONTH’S REGULAR MEETING, Mishkon’s board of directors passed three facilities-related resolutions. Taken together, the authorize expenditures — as funds are available — up to certain stated amounts for six projects. All of them are slated to be undertaken (at least begun) this summer.
WHEN WE LOOK FOR SOMEONE to do a maintenance/repair job for us, occasionally we come across a self-employed licensed contractor (or even an unlicensed one) who seems qualified and willing and affordable — except that they don’t have workers compensation insurance. (A small contractor who has no employees is legally exempt from the requirement to carry workers comp.)
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This post discusses how to proceed in such a case.…
IN THE CONGREGATION-WIDE SURVEY earlier this year, everyone was asked to respond to 3 statements that expressed attitudes toward our facilities maintenance and restoration needs. We were given three options as a reply: Definitely, Somewhat, or Not really.
For simplicity, I’m reporting (below the jump) the results only for the first and last options—leaving out the middle one. This yields a clear snapshot that is quite striking.…
THIS WEEK, a city-sponsored work crew has been cutting into our flagstone pavement. (These portions of the pavement are actually on City property.) They are opening up three places, in order to replace broken (and leaking) sections of a sewer line with new pipe. These breaks were discovered during a remote-camera inspection earlier this month, after the line backed up next door.
The City promises to replace and reset our flagstone shortly.
For a few photos (no discussion), see below the jump break.
THE TREE that stands in front of Mishkon’s sanctuary belongs to the City of Los Angeles. Like our sanctuary’s own façade, it is something of a landmark: it’s the largest shade tree for 1½ blocks in any direction — and the least-mutilated one.
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| February 2022 |
It is now slated to be pruned by a certified arborist on Thursday, June 9. This post discusses the maintenance needs of “our” street tree.…
ABOUT THREE MONTHS AGO, in a post HERE (2/14/22), I discussed the principle that special measures ($$) are warranted whenever there’s a premium placed on the reliability of services. I used the example of the water heater that supplies hot water to our school/office building — which houses our burgeoning preschool.
It now appears that I had picked a very good illustration for this principle of facilities management. This week, I received a strongly worded email from each of the two main figures behind our preschool. The present post takes note of their express desire — namely, that our synagogue do whatever it takes to avoid disruptions of the preschool’s scheduled days of operation.
THE CONSENSUS AMONG EXPERTS is that for a big ol’ building with a history of serious termite infestation like ours has, the only sure way to ensure that the termites have stopped digesting our wood is to throw a temporary tent over the entire structure and then fumigate inside the tent.
That might seem like a straightforward matter for our sanctuary building, because it’s unoccupied most of the time. However, in our case we need to accommodate not only our school building—which is attached to the sanctuary building along a shared wall, and occupied by the preschool—but also our attached neighboring building, which is owned by Soheil Darvish, a real estate developer who resides there.
This post discusses the complicating factors.… 🤔