July 11, 2007 — After spending a year in Estate Richmond, Human Services’ Food Stamp Office has moved back to its newly renovated Golden Rock offices.
The office held an open house Monday to let the public see the work that’s been done and the current state of the building. Mold and other airborne allergens affected the work environment at several government offices, including the Frederiksted Food Stamp Office, the dental clinic at the Charles Harwood Complex, the Frederiksted legislative offices and some schools. The Frederiksted Food Stamp Office is nearing completion on similar renovations.
“The work environment at the Golden Rock office is now 100 percent,” said Human Resources spokeswomen Monife Stout. “The situation began a year ago when the staff had been complaining about the working environment. Since then, we’ve been in and out, working on it with the advice of OSHA (the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and other air-quality agencies.”
Human Services had some work done, but there were still some complaints from the staff. Even with expert help they had some trouble isolating a physical cause to the complaints, said Acting Director of Financial Programs Lennox Zamore, who is in charge of several programs, including both food stamp offices.
“We had complaints of a mysterious itch,” he said. “We worked to identify and eliminate it. But we could never find a definitive single source. Since then, we decided to completely renovate the office to ensure the problem was solved.”
The mold at the Golden Grove offices was apparently getting into the air primarily through the air-conditioning system rather than lurking in damp ceiling tiles and moist drywall, as it does in many government buildings.
“We had already replaced the ceiling tiles with ones that cannot harbor mold,” Zamore said. A major component of the task was having the building’s air-conditioning ducts, vents, fans and so on seriously scrubbed from the inside.
“S and P Air Conditioning did an extremely professional job,” Zamore said. “They explained the whole process to the staff, and did extensive air-quality tests before and afterwards, so the staff are quite happy. They will be coming back regularly to keep the system clean.”
Workers also repainted the walls, removed sources of airborne fiberglass and scrubbed everything. On Wednesday, hopeful employees could be seen working in a freshly painted office.
“It was awful before,” said one employee who did not want to be identified. “In just a few minutes you’d get bumps and itching on your skin. There was just a hint of the problem right when we first came in, but it seems to have faded. We’re hoping for the best.”
Asked about the status of the Frederiksted Food Stamp Office, Zamore said they expect to complete renovations by the end of the month.
“We’ve done quite a bit of work downstairs,” he said. “I think the staff will be quite pleased.”
Asked for a completion date, Zamore said they planned to make an official announcement soon.
“It is not official, because we are still waiting on filing cabinets and other items still in shipment,” he said. “The 24th is the drop-dead date for moving services back downstairs, though. We have not made any announcement yet.”
Ceiling tiles have been replaced with a kind that is impervious to mold, Zamore said. In addition, window blinds were removed, the windows tinted and a variety of fixtures harboring mold were replaced.
Despite the workplace troubles, the federal government recently rated the territory’s Food Stamp employees as the second best in the U.S. This is the second year in a row the V.I. Food Stamp offices have received this honor. The rating is determined mathematically by the offices’ error rate. Because low error rates save the federal government money, Zamore said the offices were awarded a portion of the money saved by its good efforts. The award was just less than $150,000.
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