Nursing Home.. Medicine Wheel Village

Update on the Medicine Wheel Village

For our elders..

A couple months a Task Force was formed in order to get moving on the Nursing Home’s operations and to address any issues with the building.  The building is done, sitting idle with a few construction issues that have been part of the opening delay.  The tribe was able to secure a loan for start up costs in the amount of 1.3 million.  The consultants Health Dimensions were brought back after months of not working because the Tribe did not have the funds to pay them.  The tribe was thinking of using TECA (jtac) dollars to fund this operation but due to that timing of the TECA $ would only become available at the end of the summer.

Assisted Living Facility --> Skilled Nursing Facility.

We will start with a “Assisted Living Facility”..  which is basically a step under the full fledged Skilled Nursing Home.   The tribes goal in this is to eventually develop into a Skilled Nursing Home for our elders.

The task force had identified some of the issues that are prolonging the opening of the facility.. But more importantly  have solutions.. 1) The concrete is draining the wrong way – into the building.  

2) The heating and cooling units on top of the roof are burning out because they are too close to an outside wall.  

3) the roof itself is falling apart or getting ripped apart because of the wind.  The roof is shingles.   So will need a steel roof.  Good thing about the roof it is covered by insurance. 

Sadly the other two major  problems are not covered by the insurance. . Just shoddy construction work by the First Dakota construction company.

Unrelated to our project but same company    http://www.justice.gov/usao/mt/pressreleases/20110809132410.html

Getting Sioux’ed.

How dare they!! Haha  

We the Tribe are being sued by First Dakota for being negligent on how we broke our contract with them.  First Dakota Inc v. Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe .. they saying we owe them some $300,000.00. Nonetheless, instead of waiting for this litigation to be finalized by some judge which could take months even years.  We the Council are taking the advice of the Medicine Wheel Village Task Force and looking at getting bids to have another construction company fix the faulty construction listed above.   Moving forward so we will soon get that place opened for our elderly ki lena.   

OPENING DATE for the Nursing Home

expenditures thus far from the Loan

We as Council Reps and Executives have stopped telling folks dates when the facility may open.. Instead we've been saying “90 days till the Health Dimensions come back”.  Now that the consultants are back we just been saying “soon”.  But the good news is the MWV Task Force will be visiting the communities to provide updates and information to the folks.  See the schedule..  Wicasa Yamni le miye..  Hechetu pelo.

3 month budget