City employees fired, demoted after Phoenix main library floods

PHOENIX — Six employees have been reprimanded in connection to the destruction of a Phoenix public library, which occurred after a pipe burst and caused it to be closed for nearly a year.

The city said three of the employees were terminated, two of them were demoted and one was given a 40-hour suspension after the Burton Barr Central Library near Central Avenue and Interstate 10 flooded in July.

The flooding occurred after a corroded fire-sprinkler pipe burst during a monsoon storm, pumping between 50 and 60 gallons of water per minute onto the fifth floor of the northwest corner building.

It is estimated that the repairs could cost up to $10 million and will take about a year to complete.

According to an investigation headed by city attorney Brad Holm, “several city staff members knew or had a reason to know that the sprinkler system was corroded and therefore compromised.”

Holm said the fifth-floor sprinkler system has “required repeated contractor attention” since 2007 and leaks were discovered within the system in 2014.

In order to address the leaks, RCI, the fire sprinkler system contractor, advised officials in 2014 to either install new pipes and leave the corroded pipe in place or cut through the roof and replace the pipe.

The cost of either option would have been “substantial,” Holm said.

Wally Scholz, the library project manager who has since retired, told Nevenka Markac, the security systems supervisor who has been terminated, and Jeff Schade, the electronic systems specialist who has also been terminated, at the time that the library could not afford either option.

Holm found that neither Markac nor Schade “took steps to ensure that anyone else in [the] library management was aware” of the deficiencies.

In addition, Holm’s investigation found that the system was not inspected at all during the last 10 months of 2014, all of 2015 and the first eight months of 2016.

Markac told officials she was unaware that the system was not tested for nearly 30 months straight, but Schade said Markac approved the decision to not have the system inspected and “instructed Schade not to discuss the system further.”

The same issues that were identified in 2014 were again noted in a report done by RCI in May of this year, which was sent to Markac, Schade and the fire marshal.

According to Holm, Markac did not review the report and failed to present its findings to anyone in library management. The fire marshal also did not review the report.

Troy Wahl, the library’s project manager, was also fired as a result of the investigation.

In the spring of 2017, the library had a budget surplus of $1.2 million to be spent on improvement projects, repairs and maintenance and Wahl never identified the sprinkler system’s problems so they could be repaired.

Tammy Ryan, the library’s management services administrator and Todd Nejbauer, the building facilities superintendent with the city’s Public Works department, were demoted.

Deputy public works Director Janice Stroud was given a 40-hour suspension.

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