BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

CANTON – St. Lawrence County Community Services will soon be able to bring chemical dependency and mental health treatment to those who aren’t able to get to a county clinic.

The St. Lawrence County legislature’s Services Committee gave preliminary approval to sign a contract with Matthews Specialty Vehicles for a mobile treatment clinic. The full board, who next meets in March, will have to vote on the measure before it’s official.

“It’s probably going to go into some of the more remote outlying communities,” Community Services Director Jay Ulrich said. “We can also do primary care out of it. It’s going to be a multi-use clinic.”

It won’t be ready until later this year, and Community Services is using that interim to do some “strategic planning with a work group to figure out the logistics” of scheduling and deployment.

“It’s going to take approximately six months, possibly even more, to build this,” he said.

Ulrich said the vehicle is being made specially for the county. It will be a Ford F-450 measuring 25 feet long with room inside for a confidential exam room, reception and confidential intake, a lab area and workspaces.

It will also have a wheelchair lift, hot and cold running water, a gas heater, locking records cabinet and refrigerators to store medications that need cold temperatures.

Ulrich said it’s priced at $173,829 “before we can see if we can negotiate the price down” out of a $191,970 budget.