Edmond Town Hall Manager, Engineer Earn Praise For Money Making, Cost Savings

By John Voket

While Edmond Town Hall Facility Engineer Clark Kathan was meticulously reoutfitting and improving the building’s failing heating system, Building Administrator and Theater Manager Tom Mahoney was tearing tickets and renting banquet rooms. Both men received kudos for their respective contributions to facility operations at a recent meeting of the Edmond Town Hall Board of Managers.

During that meeting, Mr Mahoney revealed that a combination of ticket and concession sales netted more than $121,000 between Memorial Day and Labor Day. These profits are in addition to rental fees paid through his office to rent either the gym or one of the banquet rooms in the cavernous municipal center.

And Mr Kathan explained how a combination of factors he helped engineer has already saved the building management more than 2,000 gallons of heating oil since last winter, and is expected to generate nearly $20,000 in total savings. His efforts may have even saved the town from having to replace one or both of the monstrous, 80-year-old boilers.

These normally routine reports brought heaps of praise from a number of town hall board members, who recognized how hard the pair was working to generate or save the nickels and dimes that added up to these notable results.

“I think they’re to be commended,” said Edgar W. Beers, Board of Managers chairman.

Mr Mahoney, who has served in his management capacity for almost six years, actually came to work in Edmond Town Hall more than 23 years ago.

“I worked my way through the ranks in various capacities,” he told The Bee earlier this week, while preparing to open the theater for an afternoon matinee.

He credits a cooler, rainy summer for the second-highest grosses in his tenure; the 2003 summer grosses were about $7,000 more than this year. But he also improved the profit margin through the sales of concessions.

According to Mr Beers, the theater only makes 10 or 15 cents on each admission, where the concession makes a minimum of 50 percent profit on each item sold. And thanks to an expanded schedule of movies throughout the summer, he thinks the concession stand actually enjoyed about ten percent of that profit from passersby or town hall workers who were not even patronizing the movie.

“Let them eat as much candy as they want, because we hardly make a dime on the movies,” said Mr Beers.

Mr Mahoney personally selects both the schedule of films he plans to show in the local movie house and the candy and treats that are sold through the concession stand.

“We do a strong family business, but we also try to bring in adult-oriented or art house films to round out the schedule so there’s something for everybody,” he said.

But Mr Mahoney knows on which side of the bag his popcorn is buttered, however.

“In the summer, we try to do as many shows of family, or young people’s, films as possible,” he said. “So besides the concessions, we sometimes get kids or patrons coming back three or four times to see the same picture.”

Despite the fact that he cannot even get access to films until they have exhausted their runs in first-run houses in Danbury or Bethel, Mr Mahoney seems to have a knack for picking just the right combination that appeal to his local audiences.

“You know a film like Shrek 2 or Spider-Man 2 can’t lose,” he said. Even on his off hours, Mr Mahoney keeps busy previewing first-run films for consideration for Newtown. “There aren’t a lot of good family films out there.”

And when it comes to the concessions, Mr Mahoney also looks to keep things family friendly.

“I think we’re about the only theater where you can still get a choice of candy for 75 cents,” he said. “I want to be sure you can bring a family here for an evening and have a good time without going broke.”

When he is not handling the main attraction, Mr Mahoney stays busy handling the rentals for one or more of the banquet rooms or the gymnasium located in the building.

“We get basketball leagues, dog lessons or dog shows, and craft fairs down in the gym, and we’re still a popular site for parties, anniversaries, and even a few wedding receptions,” he said, referring to the bright and serviceable Alexandria Room above the front lobby.

And whether it is a movie, meeting, or marriage that brings folks to the town hall, everyone should be more comfortable, especially in the winter months, thanks to the ongoing heating system improvements instigated by Mr Kathan.

He came to work at Edmond Town Hall about eight years ago from a similar position with Pitney-Bowes, and took over the lead engineer’s role about the same time Mr Mahoney was promoted to building administrator. Since that time, Mr Kathan has hammered away at inefficiencies he discovered in the building’s aging heating infrastructure that employees say would result in them pulling on sweaters to cut the chill one minute, and opening windows to cool off the next.

The first major issue he discovered involved the constant dumping of wastewater from the heating system, while the alternating gas and oil boilers ran constantly. “It wouldn’t be odd to lose 20 or 30 gallons of water a day, because the pump that was supposed to provide water to the system wasn’t getting that water all the way into the system,” he explained.

Once the water flow and delivery problem was solved on the back end of the system, he called for the replacement of burners and a regulator that keeps one boiler at a constant 50 degrees, while the other alternately heats the steam to warm the rooms.

“Our old burners would go through 20 to 25 gallons of oil for every five we go through now,” he said. “By making the switch, we’ve already saved more than 2,000 gallons. At this rate the burners will more than pay for themselves in the next year or so, and they have a 25–30-year lifespan.”

But the latest and most significant savings is coming from the use of a new, nontoxic chemical that eliminates rust and waste buildup in the boilers and the pipes circulating through it.

“Until we added this new water treatment, we were constantly making service calls to replace rusted out pipes inside the boiler,” Mr Kahtan said. “And every time we would have to drain the entire system, which would force us to bring down the entire system.”

While the five-gallon jug of water treatment costs several hundred dollars, he is already seeing a significant difference in the clarity of the system water, which is keeping all the pipes intact and warding off expensive service calls.