During the 03/17/2021 Common Council meeting the Common Council took up the proposal to get rid of the 200 surplus hospital-style beds the city purchased in the early days of the pandemic through the WG&R “Brighter Dreams” program. The city would get refunded 25% of the bed frames along with the delivery/set-up charge (which would amount to a refund of approximately $18,000) and the mattresses would be donated to homes of needy children. [The memo doesn’t seem to mention what happens to the frames.]
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) had a question for the staff. He was curious how much effort was made to retain the beds and frames in light of the fact that we might find ourselves in another pandemic in 5 or 10 years. He wondered if it would be prudent to have on hand at least 200 bed frames if not the mattresses. He wondered what the discussion looked like and if it was an option to find space to store 200 bed frames which he couldn’t imagine would take up a ton of space.
Director Dean Gazza said that they did talk about storage, but storage is something the city is really challenged with and that is somewhat expensive. They couldn’t displace anything and in fact are actually looking for more storage. With the expense of building more storage space combined with the deterioration of the beds that could occur to them and the fact that they don’t know if they would ever use the beds, storage was not a feasible solution. If they knew for sure that they were going to use the beds in 2 years then they would take that cost and do some analysis of what the cost of storage is against the cost of the deterioration or the cost of what a new bed might be in 2 years, but they don’t know if they’re ever going to use them and they don’t have enough storage space right now anyway even aside from the beds.
Health Director Eggebrecht said he did reach out to Outagamie County Emergency Management to find out if they had storage space and a need for this as well, but their concerns surrounding storage were similar to those outlined by Director Gazza.
The Council voted unanimously to approve the selling/donation of the beds.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=825734&GUID=3BA63E0C-B886-48F5-87C4-4C47B4CA644D&Options=info|&Search=
Be the first to reply