OBSERVER Photo M.J. Stafford Signs warn people against taking the elevator at Dunkirk City Hall’s attached Stearns Building offices.

“Out of order” signs are currently a key feature of Dunkirk City Hall.

That’s not some wry joke about the city’s perilous financial situation. It’s reality, after the elevator was shut down due to a hydraulic pump failure.

The failure was found after an electrical upgrade renovated the elevator a couple months ago. The elevator was reopened for only a week before the pump problem was discovered.

“We need to get (a fix) done on an emergency basis,” city Department of Public Works Director Randy Woodbury told the Common Council Finance Committee Monday. He said that was on the advice of City Attorney Elliott Raimondo.

Woodbury explained, “We are out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and we want to make sure we don’t get fined.” That will demand “a good faith effort” to fix the elevator, he said.

Deputy DPW Director Mike Przybycien spoke of a “latent problem with the hydraulics just under the elevator.” That was not included in the electrical upgrade — and the company which did that work apparently never said anything about the problem.

City workers discovered a week after the upgrade was complete that “a jack is leaking 30 feet in the ground. To say I was disappointed is an understatement,” Przybycien said.

Woodbury said he has a bidder lined up to fix the elevator. He did not name the bidder or disclose the price, but claimed the city saved $25,000 by negotiating a lower bid.

Woodbury added that the city has about two-thirds of the funding needed for the elevator. He said he directed DPW’s Andy Bohn to “make some calls and see what we can do for financing.”

The Common Council passed a walk-in resolution Feb. 24 to free up funding for the repair, authorizing an emergency change order.

Raimondo told the council that the ADA requires municipal buildings with three or more floors to have elevators. The City Hall and the attached Stearns Building were both “grandfathered” in as pre-2010 structures that did not require elevators. However, when the city put offices in Stearns and connected it with City Hall, the grandfathering ended.

Woodbury called the elevator “an emergency which has to be addressed. … for many reasons, it has to be fixed rather quickly.”