Carbon County’s prison board has a new president following its annual reorganization on Wednesday.

District Attorney Michael Greek will serve as the new president, replacing Sheriff Anthony Harvilla, who retired from his position earlier this month.

Greek had served as the vice president of the prison board under Harvilla. Commissioner Rocky Ahner, who had served as secretary of the board, was voted to serve as vice president.

Controller Mark Sverchek was then nominated and approved to serve as secretary of the board.

Following the reorganization, the prison board discussed the broken heating unit in the female block.

Last week, the county adopted an emergency declaration after the heating unit for that block stopped working.

The commissioners, at that time, said they were looking at all possible options to get the unit fixed, but it looked like it would be upward of eight weeks to receive parts.

Warden James Youngkin said that quotes for rental heaters are being received since the heater the state sent the prison is only temporary.

Youngkin noted that one quote for a rental heater came in at approximately $3,000 a month plus the county would need to pay for diesel fuel to operate the heater.

The board said that an additional quote from Trane should be received.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners also renewed the disaster declaration, which Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said must be done weekly until the problem is resolved.

Nothstein also brought up the need to begin looking at adding a purification system to well 2 on the Broad Mountain site, which would then be able to be used in the event the water tower or well 1 have to be taken down or fail for some reason. The site includes the prison, Emergency Management Agency and dog shelter.

The tower currently supplies water to the prison and has had issues before, which led the county to have to truck in water to supply the prison.

In other matters, the work release program was temporarily suspended in the prison due to COVID-19 cases within the prison.

Youngkin said Thursday morning that, while he didn’t have exact figures of the number of cases currently in the prison, he said that there were cases in every block except one in the prison.

He also noted that it has been a struggle with staffing since employees have also been reporting COVID cases at this time.

“We’re doing a little bit better today than we were doing last week,” Youngkin said.