BIG RUN — The Big Run Borough Council has turned over the issue of the Big Run War Memorial Roof to Jefferson County and approved hiring their own contractor to come fix the problem left behind by the first contractor.
The Big Run War Memorial roof was an approved Community Development Block project through the county, and as such the lowest bidding contractor was hired for the project. The original contractor was Shield Roofing of Ohio, and the borough has been unable to contact them regarding the leaks and issues with the gutters.
“I talked to the engineer a couple of times. Now, the county solicitor, who is Mr. (C.J.) Zwick is going to be on the case with this roofing company. There’s no –we can’t get a hold of them. They disappeared. The roof has not been repaired. They didn’t come back and do that side over there and mostly the roof is good for leaking, but it’s the rain spouts,” said George Bedell, council president.
Bedell has contacted Noah Raber of Raber Brothers Construction, who came and looked at the roof with Bedell and Councilman Wayne McKee. He quoted Bedell around $2,500 for the rain spouting.
“The thing we have there, we know where he’s at, we know how to get a hold of him. If we have a problem, we can get him back,” Bedell said.
Councilman Josh Wachob asked if the cost of this repair could then be added against Shield. Bedell said if the county can contact them they will try but, “when I heard what was going on, I figured well the borough’s been through this before.”
Bedell said if Raber runs into more issues with some of the wood being rotted, the council would have to reimburse for that cost. The council approved hiring Raber up to $3,500 for the project. The borough had to pay $20,000 of the cost of the project and are hoping to get this money back if the county solicitor can reach Shield Roofing.
This sparked a larger discussion with the council about how much of the taxpayers money goes into the upkeep of the War Memorial. Councilwoman Kathy MacAulay said she was glad the borough had the COVID relief funds to put into the building, but said it was costing much of the taxpayers money.
“…When you’re talking about saving taxpayers money, you know 25 cents of every dollar just goes to keep this building intact,” MacAulay said. “We just really need to look at what are the taxpayers’ benefits for one fourth of every taxpayer’s dollar going into a building.”
She said she wanted the taxpayers to have some kind of benefit out of the building, and didn’t feel it was happening enough now to justify the money. MacAulay suggested having more recreation in the building.
“I think we’ve just got to come up with some other means to supplement the cost. I mean, it seems like an impossible task, but look at Sykesville Town Hall, they just hired a manager. A third party manager that takes care of town hall,” Wachob said.
The council then discussed restarting the winter recreation program in the war memorial. This would require volunteers to watch children during the program, but several on council spoke favorably of the program when they were younger. The discussion ended with plans to seek out interest from the community in such a program and volunteering to help.