The Wood County Board of Developmental Disabilities will be spending $8,329,600 on capital improvements this year.
At the March 18 board meeting, members approved the multi-sensory home construction project, costing $4 million paid for with Community Capital Assistance Program funds.
Other approved projects include:
• Main entrance relocation, office addition, sprinkler system and roof and mansard repair/replacement, courtyard and Friendship Wall relocation, and Entrance A revision, costing $3 million.
• Design and renovation of sensory roomsfor the Wood Lane School building, costing $276,000.
• Replacement of one bus, costing $175,000 (includes trade-in).
• Acoustic improvements for the Service and Support Building, costing $70,000.
• Replacement of maintenance vehicle, costing $52,000.
• Rooftop unit replacement for the Service and Support Building, costing $29,000.
“The 2024 Capital Plan is the result of looking ahead at the next five-plus years of projects and seeking efficiencies and long-term cost savings. By rolling several smaller projects that are on our long-range plan into a larger 2024-2025 project, we believe that we will see a large pool of contractors bidding,” said Scott McKeown, WCBDD’s Health & Safety Coordinator.
“We do not always see this when bidding smaller projects. We also avoid the ongoing year-over-year construction material and manpower inflation by combining these projects and doing them sooner rather than later,” he said. “We have been working for the last two to three years with this in mind and have been saving in anticipation of these 2024 and 2025 projects.”
