MORGANTOWN — The Monongalia County Health Department has spent 50 years growing into and beyond its two-story brick home at 453 Van Voorhis Road.
The end of that run is drawing near.
“This building has been here for 50 years. My goal is to get a state-of-the-art facility where we can be for the next 50 years,” MCHD Executive Director Anthony DeFelice told The Dominion Post.
During the most recent meeting of the Monongalia County Board of Health, Chief Financial Officer Devan Smith said Sen. Joe Manchin’s office has submitted a $75,000 request to the Senate Appropriations Committee on the department’s behalf.
If granted, that money would be used to create a master facilities plan and conceptual drawing of a new MCHD facility.
“I think it’s a four-to-five year project. By the time you’re through these first two steps, then you have to find the funding and generate buy-in,” DeFelice said. “You have to consider if you’re going to take a piece of land that you’re going to have to prep, then do actual construction. I would think it’s four to five years out.”
Space has become an issue in recent years as the health department grew to face the strain of COVID and now adjusts to a post-COVID, and post-COVID funding, world.
MCHD ended fiscal year 2024 roughly $320,000 in the red, cutting into the reserves the department has been able to accumulate over the previous three years.
One of the steps taken in response was to move the department’s Threat Preparedness department out of the Northern Operations space at the Morgantown Municipal Airport, eliminating a $3,750/month rent payment.
Threat Prep has moved in with Environmental Services, which was moved into a facility on Hartman Run Road in 2021. Rent for that space is currently $6,875 monthly.
“I think we made all the right moves during COVID. Our staff had to grow and we needed facilities. The airport location worked out great for Threat Preparedness. It was a great staging location. But now that we’re coming out of COVID, I think what we need to do is, number one, make sure we can pay for everything,” DeFelice said.
The next move on the agenda for the health department will involve the federal nutrition assistance program Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, which operates out of the old brick building next door to the health department.
“It’s an old building. It’s 100 years old and it’s getting to a point where I don’t feel comfortable with it. It’s safe. I mean, that building will never fall down, but the plumbing, electric, all that, it’s just old,” DeFelice said. “We just feel it’s time.”
MCHD is aggressively seeking about 4,000 square feet out of which it can operate the WIC program.
“We hope to have someplace picked in the next two to four weeks,” he said.
MCHD WIC serves Monongalia, Preston, Marion, Harrison, Doddridge and Taylor counties.
Even the department’s beloved mobile dental clinic, Smile Express, is getting involved.
As the department awaits delivery of its brand new, built-to-spec Smile Express attained through a $500,000 grant from Aetna, the original Smiley, a converted 2005 Winnebego, has been sold for $117,000 to a dental program based in Vermont.
Delivery of the new Smile Express is expected in September.
One of the major questions to be answered as part of the health department’s facility assessment is location.
DeFelice said his initial belief is that the department should stay as centrally located in the greater Morgantown area as possible.
“Our community engagement is going to be a big piece of this whole process,” he said. “It’s important for us to have good relationships with the two medical giants. We kind of like being in the middle of them. We would prefer to be in this area, but I don’t that’s been considered yet.”
In 2022, WVU Health System President and CEO Albert Wright restated WVU’s desire to acquire the health department property from the county, explaining the opening of the new WVU Medicine Children’s facility was the start of a new phase of development — and that development is going to require property.
In April of that year, Wright sat down with the Monongalia County Commission for a work session that resulted in an agreement to form a working group with representatives of the MCHD, the commission and WVU to figure out what the health department needs and how much it will cost to provide it in a suitable new location.
Asked about talks of WVU purchasing the MCHD property, DeFelice characterized those discussions as “hot and cold.”
