MOVING TO NEW SPACE
County relocating stockpile of pandemic supplies to new warehouse
Oakland County will soon be storing its inventory of personal protective equipment (PPE) and vaccine supplies in a new space.
For the past year, Roger Penske, chairman of the Penske Corporation, donated to the county warehouse space in Bloomfield Township, saving the county around $200,000. Penske recently informed the county that he has intentions to utilize that facility and needs the county to vacate in mid-April.
The county has identified a 27,000 square-foot facility in Pontiac with a 1.61-acre paved parking lot, which will cost an estimated $175,000 annually including utilities. There is a one-time cost of $6,900 for an inventory management system.
County officials are not announcing the exact location for security purposes.
The Oakland County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) has been purchasing PPE as needed to maintain inventory. As of March 17, the county had around 1.9 million procedure masks, 947,000 N95 and KN95 masks, 59,000 bottles of hand sanitizer, 49,700 medical grade gloves, and 7,828 thermometers remaining in its stockpile among other items.
Thom Hardesty, director of homeland security and emergency management, said the county is using the majority of its stockpile, at this time, for vaccine clinic operations. He said the goal is to maintain a six-month supply of inventory to support county government operations and 30 to 60 day supply to support groups outside of county government (hos
pitals, schools, long-term care, first responders, etc.)
The stockpile has been used to support county employees, but also 11 hospitals and health systems, 23 schools and school districts, over 50 first responder agencies and local governments, over 150 long-term care facilities and other healthcare settings.
Since March 2020, the county has distributed from its PPE stockpile 2,286,750 procedure masks, 175,186 N95 masks, 218,000 KN95 masks, 20,000 medical gloves, 76,886 bottles
of hand sanitizer, 55,542 shoe covers, and 70,205 cloth masks among other items. In 2020, the EOC responded to 8,000 requests for resources from the county, local government, and other entities.
In February, the county board of commissioners appropriated $10 million in general fund dollars to be used for pandemic-related expenses including vaccines, testing, and contact tracing. Between January and May, county officials are estimating $4.17 million in expenses related to vaccine, testing, and contact tracing efforts.
By mid-May, the county will receive around $244 million in direct aid from the federal government through the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion relief package signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 11. The county is planning to utilize some of this new federal funding as reimbursement for incurred costs related to the pandemic.
The recently-established Pandemic Response Ad
Hoc Committee will approve all county expenses related to the pandemic as well as oversee the administration and distribution of funds from the 2021 Oakland Together Pandemic Response Initiative, the pool of county, state, and federal dollars being used by the county to respond to the pandemic.
In 2020, the county received $219 million in direct federal aid through the CARES Act passed by Congress 2020. The county used over $145 million of these dollars to create grant programs to help stabilize and support small businesses, residents, and communities across the county.
Grants were awarded to more than 15,000 local businesses, which employ 65,000 people; 22 local chambers of commerce; 57 cities, villages, and townships, 278 non-profit and 31 veterans services organizations; 28 local school districts as well as retailers, restaurants, cultural institutions, and community centers.