The final town hall of the year was held in the Tinker Auditorium on Dec. 3 with 72nd Airbase Wing Commander Col. Paul Filcek and Balfour Beatty Communities leadership providing updates in base housing remediation and addressing housing concerns from residents.
“Trust will only be restored with real progress,” Filcek said during the meeting.
Project director with BBC, Dan Fredrick, provided updates on maintenance enhancements being made by BBC. Maintenance changes include a change in maintenance team members reporting directly to the BBC president of facility operations, renovations and construction for more focused technical oversight, assigning maintenance members to specific work zones and the hiring of a new facility manager.
“It’s a much more streamlined technical pipeline for our maintenance staff,” Fredrick said. “It’s a way to implement different things faster and quicker with a different level of technical expertise and oversight,” Fredrick said.
Fredrick said there are also now four remediation contractors actively working on homes in the moisture remediation process and that the process has been revised. An industrial hygienist will now conduct a whole-house moisture related issue assessment, meet with residents prior to the start of remediation work to answer questions, design a work plan in line with Air Force process and procedure of removing and replacing affected material and then conduct a post-remediation walk-through with residents to ensure the work has been completed effectively.
“We’re just starting to see the beginning results of those changes and it’s only going to continue and get better,” Fredrick said. “We completely understand and own the fact that we’ve had missteps along the way. We’ve had work orders slip through the cracks and these changes are specifically designed to help eliminate that from occurring.”
Community improvement projects on base including asphalt, sidewalk and gutter repairs, and LED light conversion throughout the community are now 85% complete; McNarney Manor improvements including roof replacement on homes, HVAC updates, and other maintenance and renovations. are 42% complete; and tree removal, replacement and erosion management is 17% complete.These projects are also now being managed by the BBC renovations team.
“We brought in our in-house renovation company and what we’re going to do is transition all of those community improvement projects to our renovations team, take that burden off our local site maintenance team in a big effort to allow our maintenance team and operations team on base to focus on our day-to-day work orders and preventative maintenance activity,” Fredrick said.
During the meeting, members of the Tinker Air Force Base Residents Council also presented concerns over vacant homes undergoing maintenance or remediation being left unlocked by maintenance staff as well as continued long maintenance wait times, all of which BBC said are being addressed.
Filcek encouraged residents to volunteer to be a part of the council, emphasizing its importance in helping to effectively communicate issues with base leadership as well as BBC.
“The resident council has been extensively engaged with both BBC and myself, but also with the wing agencies that can help facilitate some of these things,” Filcek said. “They will ultimately be the wing’s eyes on the ground with the numbers and intimacy we need to get the truth conveyed to BBC and to help the entire team get better with what we do.”
The council meets with Filcek monthly, or as needed, and also had the opportunity to meet with the Secretary of the Air Force during his visit in November.
Military housing residents are also encouraged to view the BBC Resident Bill of Rights at tinkerafbhomes.com. The bill includes resident rights from convenient methods of communication with BBC to well-maintained and comfortable homes.
If residents are experiencing any health and safety issues in base housing, they should contact BBC’s local management or maintenance team without delay and should keep all records of communications regarding the issues. Residents should also contact the Military Housing Office, which will follow a step-by-step process to get the issue resolved. If there is still no resolution after contacting MHO, residents should contact the USAF Housing Call Center at 1-800-482-6431.
Residents can also reach out to their chain of command with any concerns they have at any time.