Creek County Sheriff Bret Bowling went before the County Commissioners Board on Monday with a proposal for a new County facility.
“I am not going to read the whole thing obviously, I will highlight a few points, then take any questions that you all may have. We put in this request, it is for three million dollars and it is for a combination sheriff’s office, dispatch center, and emergency operations center. The building we are in currently is not designed to be a sheriff’s office. We have adjusted the best we can.”
Bowling illustrated how their current space has been unsafe for his employees during the pandemic:
“I want to give you an example of an event where we had one of our employees that was officed with several others came down (with COVID) and that went to three, and to five, then fourteen of our deputies there were out for that fourteen-day quarantine, that really hobbled us.
One shining example I can give you that you guys may or may not remember, I myself became quite ill, I was gone for quite some time.”
The sheriff pointed out that the building was constructed in the 1900s to be a post office and was “generally just a large warehouse.” It was remodeled over the years and divided into offices.
“We are literally at max office space, we have maxed out storage space, we have no room for expansion. Bathrooms and utilities are very antiquated and we are constantly working on those. The energy efficiency of that building is quite terrible, and we continue to have a lot of leaks in that building.”
Bowling stated the Sheriff’s Office dispatch is located at the jail and although it is safe, it is “limited.”
He then addressed the fact that Emergency management is housed in a building that is inadequate.
“It is unable to accommodate not just meetings, but in the event of some type of tragedy where all of us need to congregate to work on this crisis that might be coming up,” he said. “It just makes sense to have a location where three of the critical components of an event are located in the same building.”
The Sheriff said remodeling of the current building would be expensive due to asbestos remediation. He further stated that because of ongoing leaks, soon after the walls are painted the paint starts blistering.
County Chair Newt Stephens spoke about the current EOC: “It has a generator so it does operate, but you can sit there and listen to the roof bouncing when the wind is blowing hard in the middle of a storm. Definitely a major need there,” he said. “We are looking at an E5 room for the Emergency Management area. It would be just as easy to add a room big enough to handle E911, and we make it big enough in case we need it county-wide.”
He mentioned that since the 911 dispatch center is located in the jail facility, the jail must be open 24/7. Moving the 911 center out of the jail would allow the facility to be locked down after visiting hours, thus making it more secure.
The proposed plan would locate the facility across the street from the Collins Building after demolishing the existing structure that once housed Smith Funeral Home. There would be storage built behind the main building.
There was also a discussion of constructing a new building for the Election Board where the Care House is currently located.
Stephens said that there was “roughly” $3 million in ARPA funds left for allocation.
Following that discussion, Stephens stated there would be a Creek County Public Facilities Trust Authority meeting later in the week and that he would like to see the Authority assist in funding the project, with a possible contribution of $500,000 to $1 million.
Commissioner Leon Warner asked Stephens for the total cost of the project and Stephens said there were “no hard numbers” and a study would have to be done to determine the total cost.
There was discussion of utilizing BKl Engineering and Reed Architecture, and Stephens said he would contact both firms and obtain a cost to do the necessary studies and preliminary drawings.
There was a consensus among Board members that this was a good project but the Board wanted more information before moving forward.
Warner expressed some concern with approving this project and not reviewing the external projects that had been stated the Board would review.
“We have been telling people all along that we would go out and look at other projects once we finished with the sewer and water projects,” he said. “These projects take a lot of our administrative time of our people…we were telling people once we have the sewer and water thing behind us, we will go out and let people make their presentations for whatever their needs might be, we have been telling them that for two years.
“If we allocate all of this money that Newt has asked for this morning, we would not have any money left for those projects. I just don’t feel like that is the right thing to do. Even though I am firmly behind this project, I don’t feel like we should walk away from what I feel is a commitment,” said Warner.
The item was tabled until next week’s BOCC meeting at the request of Warner, who wants to know how much money is actually available.
