Thomas Breen photos
Health Department's current rented home at 54 Meadow.
Health Director Bond and Acting Controller Gormany Monday.
The city’s Health Department plans to stay in rented office and clinic space on Meadow Street through the end of the year as renovations wrap up at its new publicly owned headquarters to-be on Chapel Street.
City Health Department Director Maritza Bond and Acting City Controller Michael Gormany detailed those plans Monday night during the latest regular meeting of the Board of Alders Finance Committee. The meeting took place in-person in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.
Bond and Gormany appeared before the committee alders to speak in support of a proposed lease extension that would see the Health Department stay in its first-floor and ninth-floor rented office and clinic spaces at 54 Meadow St. for another six months, from July 1 through Dec. 31. The total cost of that six-month lease at the Gateway Partners LLC-owned property would be $242,844.
The committee alders did not take a vote on the proposed lease extension on Monday, thereby allowing for the matter to be discharged from committee and taken up for an expedited vote at the next full Board of Alders meeting in early July.
Monday's Board of Alders Finance Committee meeting.
The two city officials said that the Health Department had planned on moving into part of the city-owned, two-story, 58,481 square-foot warehouse, garage and office building at 424 Chapel St. by the end of this current fiscal year. But “supply chain issues” and “a few contract issues with the vendor did delay the move a couple of months,” Gormany said.
Those hurdles have all now been cleared, he said, the remaining renovations to the publicly owned property on Chapel Street are slated to be done in three or four months, and the Health Department is on schedule to begin its move from 54 Meadow to 424 Chapel starting in November.
In the meantime, Gormany and Bond said, the Health Department will need to stay put at its long-time current rented home on Meadow Street. Thus the request for six more months of a lease with Gateway Partners.
424 Chapel: Owned by the city, undergoing repairs.
Dwight Alder Frank Douglass and Hill Alder Kampton Singh on Monday.
Do you have a vendor lined up to assist with moving all of the computers and other technological equipment from Meadow Street to Chapel Street when that switch actually takes place? Hill Alder Kampton Singh asked.
Bond said her department has met several times with an architect to assist with the move, and has worked on “digitizing records” in collaboration with the city’s IT department. “Our vision is to be able to move all of the office” materials over first starting in November, she said, and then “transition the clinic slowly” through the end of December.
Will there be any disruption to the clinic’s current operations due to this move? Finance Committee Chair and Westville Alder Adam Marchand asked.
“We’re hoping not,” Bond replied. She said that the city will have to get a new clinic license from the state Department of Public Health thanks of the physical move of locations from Meadow to Chapel. That could take some time but hopefully will work out well since as the department plans to give itself a full two months between November and December to complete the move. (Click here to read more about the current healthcare services offered by the Health Department’s clinic, including back-to-school physicals and sexual health screenings, testing, and treatment.)
Bond and Gormany.
“With this move, are we going to be saving any money since we own the property?” Dwight Alder Frank Douglass asked.
Most likely, yes, Gormany replied. He said that the department’s lease of its 54 Meadow St. office and clinic spaces this fiscal year cost a total of $394,000. The requested six-month extension would cost $242,000. So, upon moving into a city-owned space, the city would save that amount by not having to pay rent. However, he continued, the city does not currently pay separately for the cost of utilities at 54 Meadow St. At 424 Chapel, it will have to cover those costs itself.
What other departments will be moving into 424 Chapel, again? Douglass asked.
Right now, Gormany said, the plan is to have the maintenance division of the Department of Parks & Public Works move in. The Board of Education, which also currently has office space at 54 Meadow St., might also move to 424 Chapel.
