Washington Co. moving on plans at Orchard Hill

WASHINGTON — County supervisors authorized plans to select an architect for a proposal that would relocate most staff to facilities at Orchard Hill in Washington. The move is another step toward plans to consolidate many county employees at one location, but several issues remain before construction can begin.

The county held a work session Sept. 19 to review a feasibility study conducted by Carl A. Nelson, where the company provided a 110-page packet outlining plans for Orchard Hill, Courthouse improvements and relocation of the County Engineer’s office.

“The issues still exist and seem to be a high priority, and now the county has access to funds that could make something happen,” said Supervisor Marcus Fedler, who has spearheaded much of the planning process. “It consolidates a few things that the county wanted to do and theoretically puts the people where they can best serve the public.”

While the proposal is moving forward, it is not without controversy. Several issues with the tentative plan arose during or after the work session in mid-September.

Staff requesting more space

Department heads have expressed frustration with the preliminary blueprints, which they said lacked needed space and facilities.

“There are things that were eliminated that I was told we would utilize in the design,” said IT Department Director Cyndie Sinn. “Is everything we discussed there? If not, it’s not fitting. There’s no training room, auxiliary conference room that we had discussed, there’s no retention storage.”

Supervisors said they needed to carefully consider the need for every aspect of the project before putting it in the plans.

“The thing we have to look at (is) the cost of having an empty building that’s getting used once or twice a year,” Board of Supervisors Chair Richard Young said. “I keep hearing all this stuff, but I don’t see no hard core figures saying that room was used 100 days out of a year, that’s what we’ve got to know.”

Concerns about conference room access were shared by several department heads at the meeting. Other room-specific issues included work spaces for visiting state officials, storage areas, staff restrooms and eventual room for growth.

Additionally, the proposed blueprints contain one break room for the entire campus, something department leaders said they opposed.

“We’d be traveling from building one to eat lunch and to warm up our meals … and get coffee and fill our water bottles and all of that,” Public Health Fiscal Administrator Peggy Wood said. “It seems minuscule, but it is an important part of people being in an office situation and being able to get out and get away from their desk.”

Parking is another concern for the public health department. Clinical Nurse Manager Karri Fisher said the facility would not facilitate vaccine clinics unless more spaces were added.

“Oftentimes, we run 30, 40, 50 people through there several times a month,” she said. “That doesn’t leave any wiggle room at all for clinics that suddenly get inflated numbers as we’ve seen in the last two years … I’m concerned about that, especially with the clients we serve, which are either elderly or people with very young children.”

Additionally, consultants may have used inaccurate numbers to estimate the needs of staff parking. Fedler told the company Washington County would park 40-50 staff out there, but said he didn’t have a source for that number. Some departments, including public health, said they had an inconsistent number of people in the office on a given day.

“I don’t recall how we determined that number, but I do know it was based on an employee count,” he said. “I think I asked the question and I got an answer, and that’s what I went with.”

Carl A. Nelson Project Manager Ryan Harris said it would take about $100,000 to add another 20-30 parking stalls.

“Parking could be added,” he said. “We didn’t add anything in the budget for that, we were trying to keep the budget as low as we could.”

Ellen McCulley, an architect for the preliminary study, said there was plenty of time left to fine tune the plans.

“It’s good we’re having this conversation so you can think about this,” she said. “When the process moves forward, you can have this list of things like, ‘OK, here are things I didn’t think about when we were doing room diagrams, this might be a space I need to add,’ … It’s a sort of launching point to move forward.”

Cost is unpredictable, but certainly high

In total, the combined budget for work at Orchard Hill, the county courthouse and the engineer’s office ranges from around $6.75 million to nearly $7.5 million, according to the feasibility study.

Even those numbers, however, are approximations. Carl A. Nelson’s projections were based on a recent day care project of similar size, a model they said was up-to-date, but not exactly in line with the needs of an administrative building.

“Everything is extremely volatile right now, prices are extremely high,” McCulley said. “We use the most recent bids we had … we can’t (look) back very far like we could in years past because the prices have fluctuated so much.”

At any rate, the cost projections are greater than the $4.266 million allocated to the county by the American Rescue Plan Act, which prompted discussions for a new building in the first place.

“We still have much of the same things we’ve talked about for almost 40 years now, but every time it’s fallen through … the biggest problem has been, in order to make things better, we’d have to spend our own tax money,” Supervisor Jack Seward Jr. said. “We would still maybe have to spend some county money on top of (ARPA funds,) but it’d be infinitesimal compared to the $4.4 million that we’ve got, so it is a lot more palatable now.”

If the county only spends money from its own tax collection, the Board of Supervisors could move forward as they see fit. However, if the extra cash is borrowed, the decision would fall to voters like a bond referendum, according to county officials.

That possibility has not been ruled out, according to Richard Young.

“We’ll sit down and look at the budget and see if we’re going to be able to do this, and if we’re going to have to go to bond,” he said. “Currently, the way I see it, you add all these up, we would have to go to bond if we did every project … and that would have to go to a vote of the people.”

Orchard Hill already in use

The Orchard Hill complexes county officials hope to improve are already in use by HACAP, among others. If the county ends up moving its personnel to the location on Lexington Boulevard, the community action program would have to find a new office.

Young said the impact was complicated by a previous federal Community Development Block Grant used by the organization to improve the facility, a move that may obligate them to remain at the site.

“They did bring up that because of some federal grant that they’ve been a part of … they’re going to have to possibly stay there for so many years,” he said at a regular county meeting Sept. 27. “It’s something we’ve got to look into.”

HACAP CEO Jane Drapeaux said she was aware of the possibility that county plans would remove the organization from its currently leased space on Orchard Hill. Still, she said staying there was preferable.

“We have received no notification that we’re leaving Orchard Hill,” she said. “We talked about some different scenarios. We certainly like our space that we have there, it was renovated for an early childhood environment, so it certainly suits our needs.”

HACAP has not yet looked into a backup location, according to Drapeaux.

“We haven’t even looked for alternate space because we haven’t been told that we need to,” she said. “We still will be in Washington County, regardless of whatever decision the county makes, so we’ll have to wait and see.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com