Cerro Gordo County approves sale of engineering building to the Emergency Management Commission

MASON CITY — The Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the sale of the soon-to-be-former county engineering building to the Cerro Gordo County Emergency Management Commission for $325,000.

County Emergency Management Director Steve O’Neil says his agency has run out of room in the basement of the Mason City Police Department, saying there’s currently a lot of the agency’s equipment that is in multiple places throughout the county.  “I believe it was the fall of 2018 when we first started discussing, and we were just looking at the assets the agency had and how do we try to get them into one area and protect them from the elements. We had them in people’s parking lots, in rented buildings, some in my garage, some in basements of some of my CERT members, how do we get it there? Over the process of the last couple of years, we’ve looked at building, we’ve looked at maybe renting a larger space, we looked at purchasing.”

O’Neil says a perfect opportunity came about as the county engineering department will soon be moving to a new facility near the county’s law enforcement center on Mason City’s west side, vacating their current facility that used to be an Iowa National Guard armory. “Through this whole process, this building came up, the commission looked at it, and instead of just the equipment, it was an opportune time to move the office and allow us the space to do all those meetings, those trainings, to be able to have a dedicated EOC with all the new technologies.”

The supervisors unanimously approved the sale. O’Neil made his comments during the “Ask the Mayor” program on AM-1300 KGLO earlier today. You can listen back to the program via the audio player below.