BAUMHOLDER, Germany – U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz conducted its first ever walking town hall Dec. 8 at Smith Barracks, which paved the way for Baumholder Army housing residents to ask questions and provide input regarding their respective housing area.Garrison commander, U.S. Army Col. Reid Furman, Command Sgt. Maj. Stephen LaRocque, the Directorate of Public Works (DPW) and the Housing Office joined efforts and started the town hall at building 8024--part of stairwell housing--and walked their way down to building 8018 where they met housing residents who voiced their concerns. This format was a first for the quarterly-conducted town hall.
“We wanted to see if our housing residents would prefer this type of town hall, as we are always looking for ways to improve participation,” said Harald Kastner, Chief of Housing.
A topic of importance during the town hall were building coordinators, which is customarily the senior Soldier in each building.
“The building coordinators have an important role,” added Kastner. “They schedule the cleaning of the area, provide assistance, counsel occupants for misconduct and if any occupant has issues, they are urged to go to their building coordinator.”
Among building coordinators, topics discussed in the town hall were dog behavior, parking spaces and speeding around Smith Elementary School.
Baumholder Army family housing has been making great strides to improve the housing environment; roughly 200 million dollars are geared toward infrastructure investments over the next three years.
“Over the next three years, there will be 13 buildings that will be renovated, and for every three stairwell housing units, there will be two larger units being remodeled,” said Lt. Col. Furman. “There will also be a 12 unit apartment that will be constructed with an elevator, the first of its kind. Also in the next three years, there will be 52 townhouses that we are going to construct,” he added.
Balcony and rolladen additions are also set in place. Housing residents will receive a notice that a contractor will be taking measurements for these additions. With the addition of the balcony, housing will replace the living room window with a balcony door and will have to replace residents’ current living room radiator with as new one.
Baumholder’s Housing Office is located in building 8746 on Clinic Kaserne. They can be reached via DSN: 531-3004 or commercial 06783-6-3004.
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