By Aila Boyd
aboyd@mainstreetnewspapers.com
The Botetourt County Board of Supervisors held a work session on a comprehensive facility study during its monthly meeting last Tuesday. The session resulted in the appointment of Steve Clinton, who is the Amsterdam District representative on the Board of Supervisors, and Dr. Richard Bailey, who is the Fincastle District representative on the Board of Supervisors, being appointed to a committee to spearhead the study effort.
During the prior year’s budget planning, there was a considerable amount of discussion about county facility needs.
The building that holds the Botetourt Circuit Court was given as an example of one of the facilities that needs to be addressed. Library facility needs, Deputy County Administration David Moorman said, have been present for quite some time. “The list could go on and on,” he said of the facilities throughout the county that need to be addressed.
He also noted that the Board of Supervisors has discussed the possibility of having a county-wide community center that could be used for various events.
Based on the understanding that some of the current facilities need to be addressed and a desire for a community center, the decision to budget $250,000 for a comprehensive facility study in the current year’s budget was made.
“It will look at everything across the board and try to create a comprehensive master plan for what those needs are, how they could be approached, and how much it’s going to cost,” Moorman said of the study. “It will allow us to systematically take on those issues and begin to address those needs.”
After the $250,000 was budgeted, county staff started researching requests for proposals (RFPs) and potential entities for the project. It was quickly discovered that examples of comprehensive facility studies were few and far between. “This is not a common project,” he said. The closest they could find were studies that had been commissioned for school divisions.
“What we found most of the time was someone doing a study for their recreation facilities or their public safety facilities or their public education facilities or their library facilities, but what we were not able to find was a master plan study that a city or locality did across all those areas,” he said.
Moorman explained that after gathering and examining what examples they could, county staff created a draft RFP and circulated it among professional architectural and engineering firms in order to gather feedback. Clinton offered feedback based on his experience in the private sector as an engineer.
Based on the feedback that was given, Moorman said that the decision to seek professional help in developing the RFP so that “the work is done right” was made.
When asked by Bailey if there are companies out there that are capable of doing such a study, Moorman said that despite the lack of examples, he feels that they would in fact be capable of completing a large-scale study along the lines of what the county is looking for.
The findings of a fire station study were recently delivered to the county. One of the topline findings was that an additional fire station is needed in the Daleville area.
