The Union County Health Department’s (UCHD) newest update in its remodeling project has sent the bids back to the drawing board.
At the UCHD’s board of health meeting Wednesday morning, it was shown the board received a $1.1 million bid from Johnson Laux Construction Ohio and a bid for approximately $2.2 million from Rockwood Builders, LTD. Unfortunately for the board, its remodeling project budget is $750,000.
“We can’t afford $1.1 million, period, that’s not going to happen,” UCHD public information officer Jennifer Thrush said.
Thrush said the next steps the board will take include the project manager speaking to the Johnson Laux Construction Ohio about what is driving that $1.1 million cost. She said this will be to clarify if the contractor understood what the UCHD is looking for or if it misunderstood what the board asked for them to “quote out.”
If the bids include parts of the remodeling the UCHD isn’t looking for, Thrush said it can renegotiate to drop the price down.
If that’s not the case, however, she said one option the board could take involves looking at elements of the project to take out of the board’s original proposal and what they send out for bid.
“Is there something we can take out to achieve what we need to achieve? Then we’d rebid that out,” Thrush said.
She said a second option would be to hire an engineer or architect to draw out what the board wants that fits within a $750,000 budget. She said the architect or engineer hired for this job would be paid for “in addition to” the current budget.
“Currently how we’re doing it is design and build,” she said. “(The contractors) designed it how they want to see it done. This will be like saying, ‘no, we’re hiring you to do this, period.’”
She said the $750,000 budget was based on a feasibility study conducted in 2017.
According to an email, Health Commissioner Jason Orcena said the board will determine what to do next based on what it discovers is increasing budget costs.
He said the board is “committed to not venturing too far from the original budgetary placeholder figure because this is figure which fits into our current financial situation.”
“There are several interested parties involved in the process and they have not all had an opportunity to discuss since we just spoke with the project management firm on Monday, April 16,” Orcena said in an email. “Our next step at this point is to have the project management firm determine what is driving the cost to be higher than anticipated.”
Also at the meeting, UCHD environmental health director Marcia Dreiseidel announced to the board that the health department was denied a recent proposal for a lead prevention grant by the Ohio Department of Health (ODH).
Dreiseidel said the reasoning behind the rejection was that the department lacks certain equipment to measure lead exposure. She noted this equipment could cost around $25,000.
“It was a bit of a disappointment, but I think they were looking for people who they didn’t have to do anything with,” Dreiseidel said. “With us, they would have had to give us some (very expensive) equipment because we don’t have that equipment.”
Thrush said the board usually applies for this grant and recieves it each year. However, because the board wrote in its grant proposal it wanted to acquire equipment from ODH or the money to purchase it, the grant was rejected.
Later in the meeting, Shawn Sech, UCHD director of health promotion and planning, said the community health assessment will be conducted soon.
Sech said the health department will be mailing notifications of the survey to 1,200 randomly selected homes Friday. In the notification, it will inform the recipient a community health assessment survey will be mailed to them in the future, and to not consider it junk mail.
“If any of you receive a letter that says ‘you may be selected,’ then good news, you’ve been selected, and expect to see a survey two weeks after that,” Sech said.
Thrush said the board is hoping to get at least 400 responses back to its survey to “help create our snapshot of the community health assessment.”
She said the assessment looks at “comprehensive” and “community-driven” health factors, with past surveys looking at things like vegetable consumption or cancer, insurance and walking rates. This year’s survey will feature 115 questions.
Thrush said the board is sweetening the deal by offering a two-dollar bill to residents who complete the survey, as board research “shows a $2 (bill) has increased return rates” in surveys.
The board also discussed a way for its local facility to conduct sports, work and camp physicals for residents for $25.
Thrush said this price was determined by comparing physical prices among other organizations and matches what Memorial Health offers. She said the board is interested in this, and this will be voted on during the May meeting.
If approved, physical services can start as early as after that meeting.
The board announced bike to school day will be celebrated at Mill Valley Elementary School May 2. Safe routes to schools partners will be leading bike trains to and from the school that day.
It was also noted that Safety Town registration is now open for incoming kindergartners for the Marysville Exempted Village School District. Safety Town is an educational camp for children that goes from June 4 to 8.
The next meeting will be held at 7:30 a.m. May 16.