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Maintenance Demands Strain System
by Carlee Macon, Briteny Dies, and Mee Vang
Facilities Director Bill Lovins took time to meet with Hilltop reporters |
Toilets running, sinks overflowing, missing screens and insect infestations
– complaints from campus housing flow into the Facilities Management Department
in a never-ending stream.
The man in charge, Facilities Director Bill Lovins, has his hands full, keeping
Mars Hill’s aging buildings up and running as new construction and renovations
come on line.
Lovins appreciates the challenge. He attended Mars Hill College as a student
and worked for Facilities in the 1970s. Now, three decades later, he is back.
Since becoming director 18 months ago, he has been attending meetings about
everything from missing window screens to planning how to apply the fruits of
the college’s capital campaign.
“The new dormitory is coming up,” he observed during a recent interview
with Hilltop reporters. “The steel has arrived, so you’ll see a
whole lot of structure go up really quickly. Renovations will be done on the
old dorms as soon as the new dorm is built.
“We hope to have enough space with the new dormitory to do renovations.
We haven’t really decided how that will take place.”
The older dorms on campus such as Edna Moore, Stroup, and Huffman were built
in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Although those three were renovated in the
late 1980s, there are still a lot of problems. Lovins particularly mentioned
the need to repair the roof of Edna Moore. Some rooms are condemned because
the ceilings are leaking.
Mars Hill's newest dorm is scheduled to open in August, 2006.
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The apartments, built in the 1970s, “are in terrible shape,” he
said.
College officials have earmarked $3 million for dorm renovations under the capital
campaign, but that will not be enough to do everything, Lovins said. The trustees
will have the final say on priorities.
Lovins manages a staff of about 50 workers who handle everything from grounds
keeping to maintenance to custodial services. To look after 31 buildings totaling
approximately 711,000 square feet, the department has 20 people on the custodial
staff, 10 to 12 for building maintenance, four supervisors, and three administrative
secretaries. Anywhere from 10 to 15 temporary workers help keep up the grounds.
Does he feel understaffed? “Absolutely,” says Lovins.
Does he feel under-funded? “Absolutely.”
Hilltop reporters shared with Lovins a list of specific complaints from students
where the issue was more the time it took to fix a problem than the problem
itself:
- A shower door in Stroup wouldn’t close. The students had to borrow their resident assistant’s shower. The problem persisted so long that the students tried to hammer the door shut themselves.
- An overflowing toilet in Brown took three or four days to fix.
- A clogged sink in Stroup hadn’t been taken care of five days after being reported.
- An ant problem in a door in Fox took a month to fix.
- Several dorms had been missing screens since the beginning of the semester. During the hot days of late summer and early fall, students faced the choice of closing windows and being unbearably hot, or opening windows and letting the bugs in. One student reported a spider bite so serious that his face swelled up and he was on medication for days.
- In the room of one resident assistant, the ceiling was chipped and flaking.
The bathroom door handle came off in the reporter’s hand when she opened the door. Screens had been missing for two months. There was a short in a light fixture and a dangling hallway light. The RA said he calls in complaints weekly.
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Lovins' is in charge of new construction as well as maintenance. |
“There are 711,000 square feet on this campus,” Lovins said. “The
dorms are old. There are a lot of problems – I realize that. We try to
get to the ones that are immediate needs."
Lovins said pouring soup or spaghetti noodles down sinks is a common cause of
clogs, and the plumbing is very old. He said students often kick out screens
to talk to their friends.
He would like to use the summer to catch up on maintenance in the dorms, but
summer conferences use the dorms until just before school starts. “If
I had all summer to work on these dorms, we could get a lot done. But summer
conferences pull in a lot of revenue that pays for the things we do repair.”
He couldn’t account for the time delays in making repairs. Sometimes,
he said, complaints from students never reach the maintenance department.
But he said problems like stopped-up sinks and toilets should be high-priority.
“There should have been somebody there. If there wasn’t, I apologize.”
Despite his busy schedule he said he is open to meeting with students. “I’m
not opposed to meeting. I’ve got a lot on my plate, but you guys are the
customers. I’m listening. You pay the bills!”
Hilltop Reporters Nicole Robinson, Tyler Wilkinson and Jennifer Jones also contributed to this story.
Editor's Note: Hilltop Reporter Carlee Macon is a Resident Assistant in Stroup Dormitory.
Click here to read about what happens to your maintenance complaints
| Spotlight on Bill Lovins
Facilities Director Bill Lovins has lived in Madison County since the age of ten. He has a farm of approximately 220 acres.
"It is an up-and-running farm. I have it leased because I have too much to do here. I have tobacco, cattle, and hay."
He has a son 27 and a daughter 25. "My son lives on the farm with us, in a separate house."
After spending twenty years working as an engineer at Rockwell International, Lovins decided to come back home and take the job as director of facilities management.
Although he had been retired for four years before taking the job, he was enthused about the arrangement. "It's close to the house. I live a mile down the road, and I've lived here most of my life. I went to school here in the seventies, worked here, and probably know 75 percent of the faculty and staff. There are just a lot of connections".
In his time off he helps run Green Acres Self Storage just west of Mars Hill on Highway 213. " My wife runs it, but I spend a bit of time taking care of that place." They recently just added another building with 31 units.
In his spare time Lovins enjoys traveling around to see the country alongside his wife. "We lived in Huntington Beach, California for a short time. My wife and I just decided we would take off. So we took our California van and our Harley Davidson chopper and hit the road. Then our money ran out and we came back home. It was a fun adventure." - by Channing Lankford
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