Dirty and damaged cells in lockdown units. A lack of ongoing and preventive maintenance to keep up with the needs in the building. The age of the buildings makes it almost impossible to stay abreast of maintenance requests, says Carroll Colbert, the supervising stock clerk who has been responsible for repairs at the hall for the past 15 years. Plumbing is the No. 1 headache, he says. We're constantly running into hot-water problems.
Boys say they either walk into cold showers or get scalded by water that blisters the skin.
A waste-water line in the annex part of the hall disintegrated last year and had to be cut out of the floor before sewage could back up. C.K. Wakefield School, built in 1967 and now used for a dormitory, is never cool enough in the summer nor warm in the winter. Ceilings drip with condensation from the cooling system. We've actually had to put buckets under the leaks. Until this year, repairs to the hall went into a pile of maintenance requests for buildings throughout the county, he says.