For those who complain that government red tape is not only redundant and excessive while also hindering progress, the Oklahoma Legislature last week reinforced that idiom.

Who knew that the massive project that began three and a half years ago on 90 acres a mile south of I-40 on U.S. 59 didn’t really have a name?

Well, the state Legislature has now made it official. Senate Bill 1707 — passed with only four dissenting votes — has established the State Veterans Home in Sallisaw, replacing the State Veterans Home in Talihina, and allows for the proceeds from the sale of the Talihina facility to fund operations of the Sallisaw facility. According to a summary of the bill, the transfer is not expected to have a negative fiscal impact on the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs’ budget, thus having no direct fiscal impact on the state budget or appropriations.

The state Senate approved the bill on March 14 by a 41-0 vote, with seven excused. Then on April 16, the state House of Representatives passed the bill by an 80-4 count, with 17 excused. The only dissenting votes in the House were from Jim Grego (RWilburton), David Hardin (R-Stilwell), Justin Humphrey (R-Lane) and Danny Williams (R-Seminole).

When Sallisaw was chosen on Oct. 26, 2018, as the site to replace the Talihina home, it turns out that the sprawling facility — which claims to be 215,000 to 230,000 square feet — should more correctly have been labeled as the prospective State Veterans Home or even the presumptive State Veterans Home.

But with last week’s legislation at the Capitol, the name is now determined.

The vote also casts the die on the Latimer County facility built in 1921. It was June 22, 2023, that the Oklahoma Veterans Commission voted unanimously to close the Talihina home, imposing an Oct. 1 deadline for veterans to vacate the antiquated center. But Senator Warren Hamilton (R-McCurtain) and his colleagues stepped in to put the closing on indefinite hold.

But with the facility losing about half a million dollars monthly due to low occupancy and high contract employee costs, Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs Executive Director Greg Slavonic upheld the OVC decision, setting the Talihina closing for Oct. 31. The remaining 36 residents — a 21% occupancy rate for the capacity of 175 veterans — were moved to the state’s other six veterans homes.

The facility had 120 residents on June 30, 2017. But since 2018 when it was announced the veterans home would eventually close, the number of residents declined to 66 by 2021.

When ODVA decided to move its eastern Oklahoma veterans home from Talihina in 2018, Sallisaw beat out finalists Poteau and Muskogee for the new eastern Oklahoma veterans center location. At the beginning of the selection process, there were six communities, which also included McAlester, Hugo and Holdenville.

Background

Following the September 23, 2020, ground breaking, construction of the long-term care facility in Sallisaw made major strides during the ensuing year, with the skeleton of the sprawling center quickly taking shape.

But for the majority of 2022, the massive center consisted primarily of exterior walls overlayed with green house wrap. An eight-month work stoppage that ended in October 2022 was not only a hot topic of community speculation, but delayed the center’s opening 13 months from March 2023 to April 2024.

Then in October 2023, Slavonic revised the date for completion to “around the end of the year — December 2024 or early January 2025.”

During construction, the project encountered “numerous issues with the construction documents,” errors that needed to be resolved. Because of that, the ODVA terminated its contract with Orcutt | Winslow, the Arizona architectural services firm. In the lawsuit filed in August 2023, negligence by Orcutt | Winslow was alleged to have caused significant delays and additional costs to the project.

The project

When completed, the Sallisaw veterans center will feature four buildings — three residential “neighborhoods” and a central community center. A neighborhood at the center is similar to a subdivision in a housing development. In two of the buildings currently under construction, a neighborhood consists of 72 residential rooms, with a third building comprised of 36 residences. The centralized community center will offer a reception area, dining room, a large room that can be used as a theater or a chapel, space for arts and crafts, a barber shop, a physical therapy room and a pharmacy to serve medical needs of the residents.

The center has been described as “a state-of-the-art facility; it’s a home-like environment, and will be the premier facility of its kind in the U.S.” Veterans with 70% disability or higher will not have to pay anything to stay in the facility.