Busy 2017 for Co. Facilities and Services

CREST HAVEN – If busy hands are happy hands then the 146 hands of the 73 employees of the county’s Facilities and Services Department may be the happiest in the region. 
According to department Director AnnMarie McMahon Feb. 13 at a freeholder caucus, the workers completed 4,138 work orders during 2017.
Those projects ranged from the painting of rusty hand railings to converting the former COMPACT School into a Public Safety Training barracks for men and women.
McMahon also cited some other jobs Facilities and Services workers did or oversaw in the past year, among them:
* Replacement of the County Prosecutor’s Office’s 35,000-square-foot roof for $800,000. The former tennis club building’s roof sheets had been “flying off…vehicles were getting damaged,” McMahon said.
* Continuing to upgrade the graves at the Gerald Thornton Veterans Cemetery.
* Renovating the Lower Township Public Safety Building at the County Airport into the central dispatch center for the Office of Emergency Management.
* Creating the incubator building at the County Airport to allow start-up firms in the unmanned aerial systems field a place to work.
* Installing a shooting simulator at the Police Academy to train officers in lifelike driving and arrest situations.
* Construction of Primate Point at the County Park and Zoo, which had a price tag of $1.2 million, and which corrected drainage problems and revamped some animal habitats.
McMahon said the department is down from 120 workers when she assumed the post from retired director Robert “Budd” Springer.
“We lost some; they retired, others transferred, I plan on building them back up,” she said.
McMahon said she had also designed a new porcupine exhibit that would give the impression one was entering a cave to see how the animals live.
Another exhibit for capybaras is similar, but “not as elaborate,” McMahon said.
Another point of pride was the completion of three tamarin row habitats for $15,000.