Cascade County officials are reviewing options related to problems with the courthouse’s copper roof.

During a March 9 discussion with County Commissioners, Les Payne, county public works director, said he had a $56,000 estimate from a local architect for a report on what’s wrong with the roof.

The $4.3 million project replaced a 100-year-old roof with Revere Copper, which included recycled copper, according to the county and preservation officials.

In 2016, county commissioners awarded a $3.578 million contract to Renaissance Roofing and $368,963 to WJE Design Consultants of Chicago and A&E Architects of Montana for engineering, architectural and construction management, according to county documents and local media reports at the time.

The roof work was completed in April 2018 and was expected to last for 85-100 years.

The courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places and Cascade County was honored with a historic preservation award in 2018 for the courthouse roof project.

Renaissance Roofing considered for national award for work on county courthouse [2019]

Since completion, the county has experienced a number of issues with the new copper roof, particularly leaks.

Carey Ann Haight, deputy county attorney, said the cost to hire an architect to assess what’s wrong with the roof would have to be paid by the county at this point, said since the county will have to pursue litigation to be reimbursed to the extent that it can be.

Travis Cushman, a deputy county attorney, is reviewing the county contracts for the roof to see what options it has for addressing deficiencies.

Payne said staff, and local architects, engineers and roofers he’d talked to, didn’t think it was material deficiencies, but rather a design flaw.

He said there are cracks all over the roof and every time the contractor has been in town, they were fixing cracks.

Payne had just started as deputy public works director when the former director closed out the roof project and documents weren’t filed in an organized way.

Belt Theater, Cascade County Courthouse among historic preservation honorees [2018]

Cushman said in reviewing documents, within a year of completion, the county had photos of water damage and some discussion in emails from county officials about design flaws and maybe some construction flaws.

Payne said it’s been difficult to get the contractors back for repairs and they often claim snow buildup as the issue and blame that on heating the attic.

Payne said most metal roofs have heat tape to address that, but the courthouse roof has none. Staff looked at putting heat tape on the roof as a temporary repair to reduce the amount of water intrusion, but that estimate was $40,000.

Payne said Renaissance wanted to spray clear coat on the roof as a $32,000 fix, which Payne said others, including the county’s insurance adjustor, did not recommend. He said the county had already made fixes recommended by the contractor, including repairing all the drains, which a local company completed.

Cushman said the county needed to further work with the contractors who did the roof work before pursuing litigation.

Haight said she thought the county needed an independent assessment of needed repairs as that discussion was happening with the original contractors.

Copper railings installed in courthouse roof replacement project [2017]

Commissioner Eric Hinebauch said he’d like to get a couple of other bids for that independent assessment.

Payne said getting another estimate would likely take another 30 days.

Hinebauch said he’d prefer to hear from the original contractors before spending more money on the roof.

It was suggested that Payne run Renaissance’s $32,000 suggested fix by local companies.

Trista Besich, county finance director, said that wasn’t appropriate since without a contract that would be creating a different kind of risk.

Payne said he had a hard time asking local companies to do work when they weren’t getting paid,

Haight said she understood they were doing the county a favor, but they also get a lot of work from the county.

She said local firms could say they do a certain amount of work at a set hourly rate, but hadn’t, so she didn’t have a problem asking them for advice.

Payne said that’s why the meeting was scheduled, so he could ask commissioners what they wanted to do.

Hinebauch said he didn’t understand why they used small sheets of copper.

“There must be thousands of solders, no wonder it leaks,” he said.

Payne said the old roof also had small sheets of copper and Haight said she thought they were trying to keep it historically accurate.

Payne said he’d get letters from locals regarding their opinion of Renaissance’s clear coat suggestion and more estimates from architects and engineers.

Cushman said he’d reach out to the original architects and engineers and staff would reconvene to determine next steps.

*2017 photo by The Electric