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| Summerlin says MZM/Athena building 'only realistic option' |
Benny Summerlin |
Friday, November 7, 2008
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
A decision on where to move Henry-Martinsville Social Services should be made soon, Henry County Administrator Benny Summerlin thinks.
He also thinks the former MZM/Athena building at Clearview Business Park in Martinsville is the right building for the agency, despite the city’s opposition.
“Much time and many resources have been wasted (looking for a new location for social services) with no progress being made,” Summerlin recently wrote in a memorandum to the Henry County Board of Supervisors.
Martinsville Mayor Kathy Lawson said city officials intend to find a solution to propose to the supervisors and the agency’s board by Dec. 31. She said she was not in the position to discuss any potential solutions right now.
“There has to be a mutual agreement” on a new location by the board of supervisors, the city council and the local social services board, said supervisors’ Chairman Jim Adams of the Blackberry District.
“I am anxious for some conclusions to come to this issue,” Adams said. But he is willing to wait and see what the city proposes, he added.
Summerlin said in a phone interview that he wrote his memo to update the supervisors on the building issue. He said he did not intend for the memo to be construed as an indirect ultimatum to city officials.
Social services has occupied the former Tultex Corp. office building uptown since previous county and city social services departments merged into one agency 11 years ago. The 20,000-square-foot, three-story building is more than 70 years old.
The county and city jointly own the current social services building, which the Virginia Department of Social Services (DSS) leases for $29,436 a year.
Administrators and board members at social services repeatedly have said the building has maintenance problems and is cramped for the agency’s 97 employees. As a result, employees must share some offices designed to accommodate one person, and that makes it hard to keep employees’ conversations with clients private.
Early last year, the county bought the former MZM/Athena building, aiming to move social services and the Henry-Martinsville Health Department there. But city officials were furious. They claimed that moving the agencies there would take Martinsville’s best economic development tool off the market.
The county is marketing the building, but Summerlin said it has gotten no offers for the building.
Ridgeway District Supervisor H.G. Vaughn, vice chairman of the board of supervisors, said he thinks that due to the nation’s economic problems, the building will not be able to attract “a quality business” soon.
Social services officials asked the Martinsville City Council in September to at least let their agency move into the MZM/Athena building, to no avail.
Social Services Director Amy Tuttle said she has not discussed her agency’s building needs with city officials since then.
Asked if she is optimistic that social services’ building problems will be resolved soon, Tuttle replied, “I don’t know.”
Lawson said she does not know what, if anything, might persuade council members to let the agency move into the MZM/Athena building.
The building is not in a zoning district that allows it to be used for governmental functions.
Other possible locations in the county and city have been studied, but the costs to either buy or lease them and renovate them to fit the agency’s needs were too expensive, officials have indicated.
“These properties,” Summerlin wrote in his memorandum, “do not meet, and never have met, Henry County’s goal of providing adequate space in a cost-effective manner that will serve the community’s long-term needs.”
“The problems don’t get fixed by studying the same tired options,” he wrote.
“If all parties really want to solve this problem, then the Athena building is the only realistic option,” he wrote. “That was true three years ago (when officials started studying the agency’s building needs), and it is true today.”
Officials have determined that about $685,000 in renovations are needed to the MZM/Athena building to make it usable by social services, whose officials have said they are amenable to moving there.
“This option would save millions of dollars in costs over any comparable options that have been presented,” Summerlin wrote.
Referring to the county and city, Vaughn said “neither one of us are rich, but we have good reserves” of money that could be used to renovate the MZM/Athena building, yet save money over other options.
Summerlin said he, Adams and Vaughn, as well as Lawson, Martinsville City Manager Clarence Monday and Vice Mayor Kimble Reynolds Jr., have met several times in the past few months to discuss social services’ building needs.
“We’ve had very, very good discussions,” Lawson said. “We’re diligently working on a solution.”
Summerlin wrote in his memo, though, that all discussions during the past three years seem to have been “fruitless.”
“As the lack of progress continues,” he wrote, “the current social services building deteriorates; as we wait for more information on sites that don’t work, social services employees and clients continue to dodge dripping water and step carefully over sagging floors.”
The health department building on Commonwealth Boulevard is not as bad as the social services building, according to Summerlin.
However, he said that last year, the county spent more on the building’s maintenance than the health department paid in rent.
The health department leases its building from the county and city for roughly $12,000 a year, Summerlin said.
Reached on his day off from work Thursday, he did not know exactly how much the maintenance expenses were on the building last year. He said they were more than the lease amount “but not a tremendous amount” more.
“The health department has critical needs that must be addressed in the near future,” he wrote. “The Athena building has sufficient space that could be finished in the future to accommodate the health department.”
Due to its budget shortfall, the state will not provide extra money soon to help social services buy or lease a larger building, Summerlin said.
Marianne McGhee, public affairs director for the Virginia Department of Social Services, confirmed that. She also said that a survey of space needs among 120 local social services agencies statewide indicated four other agencies across Virginia have an equal — or perhaps worse — need for more space as the Henry-Martinsville agency.
“We do understand” the agency’s need, McGhee said, but “many localities are stretched for space” at their social services offices.
Even if the state becomes willing to pay more money, Summerlin said, “this community is not in a position to ask for assistance. We have no plan that is agreeable to both (localities’) governing bodies to present” to the state. |
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