I attended the December 29, 2022 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.
All commissioners were present.
This meeting was held in the Commission Building conference room. There was a pretty good crowd there including two judges.
The first agenda item was the Opioid Settlement.
Presiding Commissioner Hasty said that the drug treatment court was established by Camden County in 2017. He had read about litigation against pharmaceutical companies for their role in the prescription drug/opioid epidemic. He then contacted a law firm and had those attorneys initiate litigation. Camden County eventually joined the exisitng lawsuit and that lawsuit resulted in a settlement with the pharmaceutical company. Camden County recently received the first two payments totaling $125,039.83 from its portion of that settlement.
The Commission unanimously approved a motion to establish a separate ledger account for the opioid settlement money.
The money from this settlement will be dedicated to the drug treatment court. Counties are allowed to retain 15% of the settlement for general expenses, but the Commission decided to to allocate all of it to the drug treatment court.
Judge Koeppen thanked the Commission and stated they will be good stewards of the money.
Somebody ordered a giant copy of the check and everyone took photos with them holding the check. It looked a bit like one of those lottery winner photographs you see on television. I’m assuming the rest of the payments will arrive as normal-sized checks.
The second agenda item was the Veregy courthouse renovation project change orders.
The first three change orders were for additional work that has already been completed by Veregy:
#1 Construction of pass-throughs at one of the temporary county office locations ($5,810)
#2 New HVAC unit at the same temporary county office location ($10,300)
#3 Sewer line repair for the Commission Building ($26,500)
The final change order added the replacement of old cast iron and galvanized pipes in the courthouse into the contract’s scope of work at no additional cost to Camden County.
The Commission approved these change orders and signed them.
And that was that.
Among the Dogwoods 
Who owns the bldg they are temporarily using? and where is it? Thanks for your wonderful reports!!
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It’s the old MU Extension building across the street from RJ’s. I’m not sure who owns it, but they probably appreciate the new HVAC unit!
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Camden County owns the old MU Extension building. The HVAC has been out for almost 10 years, so the building is very musty. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have advertised for bids to repair that HVAC separately. Also, at $10,300, that amount could have easily been paid out of the county’s operating budget rather than financing that cost through the bond.
The sewer line change order also seems high unless it includes pavement repair. It should have also been advertised for bids separately. There are several local excavating and plumbing contractors that would have submitted bids.
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