County to spend $1M on storage buildings

CELINA - Mercer County commissioners have agreed to spend nearly $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds on new storage buildings for two county departments.

On Tuesday, they voted to award a pair of contracts totaling $990,896 to Muhlenkamp Building Corporation of Coldwater.

The first is for $395,000 for the construction of a 60-by-20-foot storage building north of the employee parking lot at the Mercer County Sheriff's Office at 4835 State Route 29.

Sheriff Jeff Grey said the building will house large evidence such as vehicles. It will be big enough to store a semi-truck.

"If there's a bad traffic crash or something and we had to hang onto the cars, we used to put those in the Spriggs Building in uptown Celina," Grey said. "Well, that Spriggs Building, they knocked it down last year."

Commissioners had awarded a $75,000 contract to Fenson Contracting LLC of Fort Jennings to tear down the county-owned building last summer. County officials may later hand over the property to Celina for a fire department expansion.

The sheriff's office at present pays to rent storage for large evidence.

"If we'd have a bad accident that we would have to hang onto a car for evidence, we have to pay storage on that and that gets expensive," he said.

The project has been under consideration for some time.

"We talked about having an evidence storage building before we built the jail we are in, that's how long we've been talking about it," he said.

The second contract for $595,896 is for the construction of a 150-by-80-foot storage building at the Montezuma Club Island wastewater treatment plant at 6590 Guadalupe Road.

County community development director Jared Ebbing said the building will store sanitary equipment such as dump trucks and excavators.

"Over the years we just store equipment outside, and weather takes its toll on maintenance costs and things like that," Ebbing said.

For both contracts, plans call for stick-frame buildings with concrete floors and metal siding. They will be fully insulated.

The completion date is this fall.

Both projects will be paid with ARPA funds, leaving the county with a little over $20,000 from its two federal installments totaling $7.9 million, according to county administrator Kim Everman.

Since there is potential for change orders, these funds will remain unencumbered, she added.

"Our office has been tracking our administration time for management of these funds," she said. "Administration is an allowable expenditure. Hence, a portion of the $20,000 will be utilized towards administration if not needed for change orders."

The largest disbursement of county ARPA funds - $2.9 million - was for the now completed agriculture center featuring offices for the Soil and Water Conservation District, OSU Extension and United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency.

ARPA was designed to help states recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S Department of Treasury had initially said the funds were to support public health; address negative economic impact to workers, households, small businesses and industry; replace lost public sector revenue; provide premium pay for essential workers; and be invested into water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.

Since that time, the treasury has ruled the funds could be spent on standard government allowances up to $10 million, according to Everman.

That means the funds can be spent broadly on government services. They cannot, however, be applied toward debt or pension funds, she had said.