Much of the discussion during Fort Campbell’s most recent virtual community town hall focused on military housing.
This was the post’s fourth town hall broadcast through Facebook Live. As of March 28 the stream has reached more than 20,000 Facebook users of which 477 made comments.
Over the past month, the Directorate of Public Works and Lend Lease/Campbell Crossing have been working in tandem with garrison leadership to resolve maintenance issues Soldiers and Families may be experiencing in their homes and barracks rooms.
Colonel Joseph P. Kuchan, Fort Campbell garrison commander said there may be some confusion as to who to call when a repair is needed or a maintenance issue arises. If you live in Family housing the first call should be to Campbell Crossing (931-431-3966), which is the privatized manager that handles all of the Family housing on post.
“If things aren’t working through Campbell Crossing for whatever reason, please give [the Directorate of Public Works] hotline a call,” Kuchan said.
The DPW Housing Complaint Hotline is 270-956-4728.
“The hotline is manned 24 hours a day and it gives a call into the government DPW housing office,” Kuchan said.
The Fort Campbell Housing Services Office is part of DPW and is charged with the oversight of Campbell Crossing.
“If you are having work done on your home, Campbell Crossing is doing that work,” Kuchan said. “And oftentimes we will have the government housing officers follow up to make sure that you are satisfied, and frankly I have been making some of those calls as well.”
Kuchan hosted the virtual town hall. He was accompanied by Pat Appelman, director of the Directorate of Public Works; John Bredehoeft, Lend Lease/Campbell Crossing project director; Stacye Downing, director of Fort Campbell Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation; and Col. Troy Prairie, Blanchfield Army Community Hospital chief of primary care.
Although issues with housing were the top concern of Facebook commenters, the panel of subject matter experts also discussed various other subjects including health concerns related to possible mold exposure, changes at BACH, upcoming MWR events including Month of the Military Child, and the closing of the horse stables near Gate 10.
LEND LEASE/CAMPBELL CROSSING
“We are fully committed to correcting any and all issues,” Bredehoeft said during the virtual town hall.
Campbell Crossing has hired and contracted additional staff to expedite servicing the recent high volume of work orders. The addition of contractors will provide quicker turnaround, he said.
“I know that some folks have received appointments that are out into April and in some cases even later than that initially,” Bredehoeft said. “What we are doing by executing those contracts is trying to pull those forward.”
He also pointed out that all Campbell Crossing personnel have gone through “mandatory customer service training.”
Some Facebook commenters posted concerns about possible exposure to mold in Family housing. If a resident suspects the presence of mold in the home, call Campbell Crossing immediately, Bredehoeft said.
“Any mold call or environmental call is treated as urgent and we have 24 hours to respond – nights, weekends, holidays, it does not matter – 24 hours from when you call in, that is our required response time,” he said.
If residents are not getting the expected assistance, Bredehoeft encourages them to reach out to their community manager at their community office. “The community managers have a direct line to me,” he said.
If a Soldier or Family member is experiencing symptoms that he or she believes to be linked to mold exposure Prairie recommends a visit to that person’s primary care provider.
Often a patient suspects mold exposure, Prairie said, but instead underlying health conditions like asthma or seasonal allergies are diagnosed as cause of the problem.
For those residents who are interested, Bredehoeft said Lend Lease/Campbell Crossing can, upon request, furnish maintenance records of the homes in which they live. The request should be made to Campbell Crossing through the community managers.
Based on resident feedback, Campbell Crossing now provides new occupants with a record of the maintenance performed after the previous occupant moves out.
“When a Family moves out and before another Family moves in, we do a bunch of maintenance and whatever needs to be fixed, repaired and so forth,” he said. “We will leave information about what general work was performed that includes who the technician was, who the quality control person was and so forth.”
BARRACKS
DPW is charged with the maintenance of the barracks.
“The chain of command went through all of the barracks rooms on Fort Campbell,” Kuchan said. “And if there were any issues in there, then they are getting addressed and fixed.”
Based on those inspections more than 6,000 work orders have been called in, Appelman said.
“Of those 6,000 approximately 1,100 are for mold. So you can imagine that we cannot hit 1,100 rooms at once,” he said. “What we have done is we have hired two contractors who are going through the barracks right now.”
If a mold call comes into the DPW work order line the directorate’s environmental staff will go out to the barracks within a day.
“They will determine what level of mold there is,” Appelman said. “If it is dangerous mold and if someone needs to move out of the room right away.”
Should mold be found in a barracks room, DPW has a contractor on stand-by to perform remediation, Appelman said. Once the clean-up is completed DPW will perform any needed repairs.
If a Soldier finds an issue in his or her barracks room, Kuchan recommends the Soldier address the problem with the respective chain of command.
“We can get those issues fixed, we just need to know about them,” he said.
DFMWR
The Fort Campbell Horse Stables will soon be shuttered.
“Unfortunately, because of some of the funding restrictions within Army to pay for a lot of our initiatives, modernization and the Futures Command we are starting to see a reduction in our budget for some services that we have provided in the past and the horse stables are one of them,” Kuchan said.
Department of Defense civilians and retirees much vacate the horse stable barns or the pastures not later than June 15.
“On June 30 any active duty who are using the barns will have the opportunity to transition to the pasture and they can continue to get continued horse care in the pasture until Sept. 30,” Downing said. “Sept. 30 is the date that we plan on concluding all horse stable and pasture service.”
Downing directed people with additional questions concerning the closure of the horse stables to Greg Hopkins at 270-798-2629.
The themes for April 2019’s Month of the Military Child is “Military Kids Can,” Downing said, and MWR has a host of activities planned for the smallest members of the Fort Campbell Army Family.
“We are doing significantly more events this year than we have in the past. One of the fun ones is the Story Book Sprint that kicks off on April 6 and it is at Shaw [Physical Fitness Center],” she said. “We hope that people come dressed in costumes.”
Additional events include arts and crafts classes and rock climbing. An Impact Wrestling event on April 12 at Shaw PFC will be ticketed because of limited space. The free tickets are available at Taylor Youth Center, Shaw PFC or Leisure travel on Monday. The kids are going to love it, Downing said.
BACH UPDATES
The Office of the Surgeon General has established a new policy on overseas screening for Family members, Prairie said.
“Every Family member must see their primary care provider, every Family member must get a dental [exam] and every child must be screened for a learning disabilities and educational support [he or she] may need overseas,” he said. “If you know you are going to PCS overseas we need you to be involved right now reaching out to your doctors because it is going to take you a good couple of months to get through the paperwork.”
Recently, BACH welcomed a new developmental pediatrician after losing the previous provider nearly nine months ago, Prairie said.
The developmental pediatrician is the specialist who takes care of children with autism, Asperger syndrome and oppositional defiant disorder. The hospital was without for about six months.
Dr. Wade White comes to BACH from Naval Base San Diego, California, where he also practiced developmental pediatrics.
“He is absolutely fantastic,” Prairie said. “We have been able to reach out and start pulling back some of those consults where folks had been waiting seven months and still were three months away from their appointment. We were able to pull them back and get them seen.”
RECYCLING
The Qualified Recycling Program at Fort Campbell brings in some $2 million each year through recycling waste products like paper and metal. That money is then returned to the community in the form of projects like the post’s walking trails, Appelman said.
But the installation could bring in much more money through recycling.
“Right now we recycle about 30 percent of the trash that we could recycle,” Appelman said.
Imagine making $2 million off of that, if more people recycled how much more money we would have to put into community projects so we would really like to encourage that, he said.
People can drop off their paper, plastic and glass at the Fort Campbell Recycling and Convenience Center at 6802 A Shau Valley Road. Additionally, there are three drop off stations located near Dolan Pool at Gate 1, by the Exchange and in front of Dryer Fieldhouse, Kuchan said.
“[The QRP] funds the fireworks. That is the money that funds the big concerts and post-wide events. So please as much as you can, do that,” he said.
To watch the virtual town hall visit https://www.facebook.com/FortCampbell/videos/1622161634553850.
| Date Taken: | 04.01.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 04.02.2019 17:52 |
| Story ID: | 316710 |
| Location: | FORT CAMPBELL, KENTUCKY, US |
| Web Views: | 215 |
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This work, Fort Campbell garrison hosts its fourth virtual town hall via Facebook Live, by Maria McClure, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
