(Spirit Lake)– A recent Fire Marshall’s inspection of the Oak Haven Care Facility has turned up more deficiencies.
Dickinson county owns the facility, which is leased and operated by Season’s Center for Mental Health. The board of supervisors reviewed a report on the inspection at their meeting Thursday. The county has 30 days from which the report is dated to respond to the Fire Marshall on how it plans to correct the deficiencies. The report is dated May 9th.
Most of the deficiencies are minor and will be addressed in upcoming rennovation projects.
It’s the growing cost of the projects that has one supervisor again expressing concern over the facility’s future. Supervisor Paul Johnson says he’s hearing from more and more constituents wondering how feasible it is for the county to operate the facility which serves only a very small number of the county’s residents. Other counties pay Season’s Center for clients they have at the center. Johnson said that once the latest round of improvements have been made, the county will have sunk more than 600-thousand dollars into the facility. He suggested one possible option to help recoup that would be to increase the amount of rent Dickinson county charges Season’s Center. But Beth Will, Dickinson county’s General Relief Director, warned the increase would be passed on to the counties that have residents at Oak Haven. She says they would probably move those people to other facilities, resulting in Dickinson county getting stuck with an empty facility.
After further discussion, the supervisors outlined a procedure for responding to the Fire Marshall’s report. They also directed a consultant to get plans and specifications put together for some A-D-A compliant concrete work that needs to be done at the various entrances to the facility. That was one of the more serious deficiencies outlined in the report.
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