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EXCLUSIVE | New morgue makes sense, Mahoning commissioner says
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County Commissioner David Ditzler said the county would be better off spending millions of dollars to build a morgue for the coroner’s office than to spend hundreds of thousands retrofitting Oakhill Renaissance Place with a new morgue ventilation system.
“The morgue made sense there when it was a hospital,” Ditzler said of Oakhill, which is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
“Now that it’s an office building and the ventilation is so poor, to try and clear up the issues when we have bodies come in there that are decaying, you literally have to evacuate the building,” Ditzler said.
“Instead of spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on retrofitting new air-control systems into your facility, which is already too small and too outdated, it only makes sense to spend the new money on a new facility,” Ditzler said at Friday’s commissioners meeting.
“It’s not conducive to where we are in today’s science,” he said of the former hospital morgue, which has 1970s-vintage equipment. “We have to explore all options.”
“I agree 100 percent. We do absolutely the best we can, and I try very hard not to complain. I am very sensitive to budgets and understanding that we’re not flush here in Mahoning County,” said Dr. Joseph Ohr, forensic pathologist and deputy coroner.
“We try very hard arranging our schedules, arranging my autopsy time to be a good neighbor to those at Oakhill, and, sometimes, I’m not a good neighbor, and I’m ashamed of that,” he said.
Architect Paul Ricciuti will meet soon with Dr. Ohr and the commissioners to evaluate all options for the coroner’s office “so we know the most timely and cost-effective means” of addressing the issues, said James Fortunato, county purchasing director.
“What if there was a disaster” with a large number of deaths? asked Commissioner Anthony Traficanti. “There would not be enough room.”
In an interview after the meeting, Dr. Ohr said he now tries to schedule autopsies on badly decomposed bodies late in the day to reduce odor problems at Oakhill.
A ventilation-improvement proposal calls for raising Oakhill’s morgue ventilation stack well above any air intakes in the building’s air-handling system, he added.
When the commissioners discussed building a new morgue with Dr. Ohr in a staff meeting last fall, Traficanti said it might cost $3 million to $4 million, and the county could borrow money for it in the bond market.
In the short term, Traficanti then said he believes morgue ventilation needs to be improved at Oakhill, where such upgrades are estimated to cost $300,000.
In a discussion of Oakhill, county Auditor Ralph T. Meacham said this week the county has $70 million in new borrowing capacity, but he doesn’t recommend borrowing up to that limit.
In the fall meeting, the commissioners discussed a new morgue location on the Industrial Road site now occupied by the county dog pound or adjacent to the new dog shelter to be built on Meridian Road.
“It would be an absolute dream to have a new, modern facility” in a stand-alone building occupied only by the coroner’s office if the county can afford it, Dr. Ohr said last fall.
“It would be a forensic facility, not a hospital morgue,” Dr. Ohr said Friday.
Such a building would offer more privacy and dignity for the deceased and their families, better preparedness for mass disasters, improved isolation of potential biohazards and a modern ventilation system, Dr. Ohr said.
“What I have is an aging population. I have a heroin and fentanyl epidemic raging,” resulting in overdose deaths, Dr. Ohr told the commissioners concerning the demands being placed on his office.
When the county bought Oakhill in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2006, then-county Administrator George Tablack said the county’s failure to purchase the former hospital would have resulted in the need to immediately relocate the coroner’s office at a cost of somewhere between $500,000 and $1.5 million.