Schuylkill County commissioners are a step closer to readying a former beauty school for occupancy by county agencies.

On Wednesday, commissioners agreed to seek bids to remove the floor tile, including any asbestos tile, at the former Schoeneman building at 324 N. Centre St., Pottsville.The building, catty-corner to the county courthouse, will eventually house the Children and Youth Services agency and other organizations, perhaps as soon as next year."Children and Youth is the entity that is growing now, and is expected to continue to grow," county Administrator Mark Scarbinsky said.The bids are to be submitted to the county controller's office by 3 p.m. Sept. 23.They will be publicly opened at the commissioners' work session scheduled for Oct. 1, with a tentative bid award at the Oct. 8 meeting.A mandatory prebid conference will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, in the rear of the parking lot.Commissioners acquired the building and two nearby parking lots from brothers Dale and Franklin Schoeneman, who operated the Empire Beauty School, for $740,000 in May 2013. The county has received government grant money to help offset the cost.Since then, the building has been stripped, and Scarbinsky said he expects to seek bids for electrical, plumbing, mechanical and other work before the year's end."We've been cleaning that up in stages. Now the next step is to do any kind of abatement," he said."Our goal is to see if we can put together a spec package on the rest of the renovations by the end of the year," Scarbinsky said.In other matters Wednesday, commissioners issued a proclamation designating Sept. 17 through Sept. 23 as Constitution week.Sept. 17 marks the 227th anniversary of the drafting of the United States Constitution.Also on Wednesday, commissioners awarded a Cumberland County company the job of repairing the River Drive bridge over Pine Creek in West Brunswick Township.Deblin, Mechanicsburg, submitted a base bid of $412,863.33 and an alternate bid of $385,145.95, and was the lowest of three bidders for the project.The others were Desco, with a base bid of $473,943.04 and an alternate bid of $448,823.04; Heim Construction, with a base bid of $492,081.03 and an alternate bid of $415,031.72; and Rylind Construction, with a base bid of $490,719.22 and an alternate bid of $446,992.32.This project is funded from liquid fuels monies.