Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 27, 1993 TAG: 9310270044
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By MICHAEL STOWE
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The conference room has been converted to office space for three workers.
"I don't have a place in this building where more than 10 people can meet," he said. "We are just so overcrowded."
File cabinets crowd the hallways, along with buckets strategically placed to keep water from the leaking roof off the tattered carpet of the former motel.
"I have had employees working out in the hallway," he said during a tour of the facility last week.
The scene's not much different across town at the county health department on Depot Street where nursing supervisor Ruth Wolford's office doubles as a supply room and the office's break room is the boiler room. Some home health supplies are stored in the women's bathroom.
"We have very definitely outgrown this facility," she said.
Both Farris and Wolford hope their space crunch problems will soon be history.
County voters will decide next month whether to support a $2.88 bond referendum to fund a new 35,000-square-foot Health and Human Services building.
The proposed building, to be located behind the current social services facility on Pepper Street in Christiansburg, would house Social Services, the Health Department and human services, which includes the Office on Youth and the Retired Senior Volunteers Program.
They are currently in five separate locations.
Combining the services into one building also would solve transportation problems - which agency officials agree is the biggest headache for needy people - and create savings in staff, telephone, maintenance and other operating costs.
Voters rejected a bond package in 1990 that included $2.2 million for a new facility, but Farris is confident it will pass this time because interest rates are so low.
"Now is as a good a time as ever to try and get something done," he said.
If the bond issue is approved, the state will pay the county up to 80 percent of the the building costs and share the operating and staff expenses.
Voters just need to look at the facts to see how inadequate current facilities are, Wolford said.
The Health Department, according to state guidelines, is 6,000-square-feet too small.
The Health Department had a percent increase in client visits from 1990 to 1991.
The Department of Social Services averages about 2,800 customers a month and its benefit programs have grown by 142 percent in the last seven years. Farris said overcrowding is so bad that its tough to talk privately with visitors. Two counselors, for instance, share an office roughly 7 foot by 10 foot.
"It's very tough for clients to have confidentiality," Farris said.
The main examination room at the health department opens into the waiting area and undressed patients have been exposed when the door is accidently opened by a young child or a clinic worker.
"It's unfortunate, but it has happened," Wolford said. The Health Department facility was built in the 1950s.
The Women, Infants and Children program is a federally supported supplemental food program administered by the Health Department. Because of heavy traffic in the building, clients have to stand and wait for hours.
Wolford said the health department's poor facilities cause some people to lose confidence in the care it provides.
"People equate quality with appearance," she said. "That's not the way it should be, but it is. A lot of people don't want to associate themselves with a structure like this."
by CNB