March 29, 2022 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the March 29, 2022 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All Commissioners were present.

The only agenda item was Medical Missions for Christ Renovation.

This has been an agenda item at several previous meetings. Medical Missions for Christ is seeking ARPA money (or regular money, for that matter) to replace worn out equipment, create a private room for chiropractic services, and generally upgrade the portion of the building they share with the Camden County Health Department.

The Auditor stated he had spoken with BKD (the county’s consultant for ARPA money). BKD was objecting to spending ARPA money for the renovations. They were fine with the $139,000 for medical equipment. The Auditor suggested to the representative from Medical Missions that they might be able to get it approved if they made it clear that the renovations were needed to provide social distancing in their clinic.

There was a discussion about the Department of Treasury’s Final Rule on ARPA that allows the county to spend ARPA money on a wider variety of expenses if they received less than $10,000,000. (Camden County received a little less than $9,000,000.) The issue is that you can do this, but the county would have to prove in a detailed report that they lost revenue during the year. Since Camden County’s economy has been booming over the last few years, it might be hard to meet this requirement.

Commissioner Gohagan wanted BKD to have a representative at the next Thursday Commission meeting. The Auditor said he will call them and see what they say.

Since the Department of Health is already renovating their portion of the shared building, the commissioners agreed it would make sense to also renovate the Medical Missions for Christ’s portion. Commissioner Gohagan asked the Medical Missions for Christ representative which construction company was doing the renovation work for the Health Department. She said it was Dake Construction.

Commissioner Gohagan seemed surprised and clarified with her that Dake Construction was working on the building.

Commissioner Hasty said that “there are a lot of Dakes around these parts.”

And that was that.

I didn’t get what this last part was about, but I did a little bit of research into it.

The renovation for the Camden County Health Department was a $204,000 bid that would be paid by a $400,000 grant. There was only a single bid on the project and it was from Camden County Renovations. It seems this bid was then subcontracted out to Dake’s Construction.

Stephanie Dake is the Administrator for the Camden County Health Department. It appears that her nephew is the owner of Dake’s Construction. Welcome to Camden County!