It’s been more than six months since recommendations were given to county officials about how to fix space and accessibility needs related to the Brown County Courthouse.
The commissioners are planning a series of meetings out in the townships to gather more input before making any decisions.
“We’ve fallen behind on discussions about a new justice center. It doesn’t mean we don’t want one or we do want one, but we do need to have discussions about it,” said commissioners President Dave Anderson at their Feb. 20 meeting.
No meeting dates were immediately set.
DLZ started last January to examine the future of the historic courthouse. The firm offered two suggestions to the Brown County Commissioners and Brown County Council last summer: Move court offices to a new building that would be built next to the Brown County Law Enforcement Center, and move some county employees into the current courthouse after it is renovated.
DLZ recommended building a 26,910-square-foot justice center at an estimated cost of between $6,750,000 and $7,250,000, plus 25 to 30 percent additional for “soft costs” like professional and financing fees and contingencies.
That does not include the cost of renovating the current courthouse, which was estimated between $650,000 and $750,000. That work would make it compliant with the Americans with Disability Act; replace doors, windows and fix brick mortar; and repair and restore the outdoor stairway.
The renovations and building costs would be paid for with property taxes.
DLZ’s plan was for the county clerk’s office on the first floor of the current courthouse to be turned into multiple conference and meeting rooms. The probation office across the hall would be split into a county office and learning center. Public restrooms would be on the first floor.
Upstairs, the courtroom would be made into a chamber for the commissioners and council, and a public meeting room. The current court offices behind the courtroom would be made into three separate offices for the commissioners with space for an administrative assistant. The smaller courtroom upstairs could be made into public restrooms.
The two-story justice center next to the jail would contain the circuit court office, county clerk, probation department, Community Corrections and public restrooms on the first floor; and the prosecutor, public defenders, GAL and public restrooms on the second floor.
However, the decisions on who would go where are not final.
The courthouse, built in 1874, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Several years ago, taxpayers led a successful remonstrance to reject a plan to add a large addition onto the back of the building, paid for with property taxes.
Anderson said he would like to get DLZ to come back for the meetings out in the county.
“It’s an important thing to either get it done or get over it, one or the other,” Anderson said.
“We desperately need it, and I know that. It will be a pricey thing, and I know that. I have two years left in office. I’d like to have something off the ground and running well by the time I leave office.”
During meetings last summer, members of the public stood up to express concerns about taking out loans to finance the project that could increase property taxes.
At the Feb. 20 meeting, commissioner Diana Biddle said that there could be a way to work with the county’s current debt to restructure it and make the justice center tax-neutral. If that was done, property taxes should not go up because of this project, she said.
“As things roll off, we add more of our debt on, so in two years when the $2 million (road) loan rolls off, then we push more of that debt into its place,” she said, citing accounting firm Umbaugh & Associates.
Biddle said that Umbaugh is finishing the county’s five-year financial forecast. She suggested they present the forecast to the commissioners and the Brown County Council in a joint meeting.
Why do this?
The county needs to either rent or build more space for its operations, Biddle said.
“There’s nothing left. This is the only meeting room we have in the county now (the Salmon Room at the County Office Building). We’re fighting over who gets to have meetings here,” Biddle said.
“We need to have a facilities meeting because we need to find a new location for absentee voting. We have space needs at Community Corrections. The prosecutor’s office staff is very much wanting something done with environmental conditions of their office. The courthouse security people approached me last week and they want a sally port added on to the back of the existing courthouse for secure transfer of prisoners because they’ve had some issues,” she said.
In the discussion about the courthouse, Biddle also brought up a need for a coroner’s office.
Coroner Earl Piper doesn’t believe that putting that office in a courthouse or annex with other offices would work.
Piper is retiring from his main job at Bond-Mitchell Funeral Home this year, and that is where he has been taking bodies involved in coroner cases when the need arises. He estimates that 90 percent of his calls result in having to hold a body overnight and sometimes a couple of days before they are released to the families.
He uses a room in his home as his office.
Piper said it wouldn’t work for the county to rent space from Bond-Mitchell, the only funeral home in the county, for this purpose.
“I would be very surprised if they (the funeral home) would (allow it). … You need to be looking at something that’s going to be permanent. Who’s to say some point in time the corporation (which owns Bond-Mitchell) says, ‘Hey, we really aren’t into little small-town funeral homes and we’re just going to shut it down.’ We don’t want to be in that position,” Piper said.
“This will be my last term, so I won’t be running again. I know for a fact that the funeral home would not want a stranger running in and out of there as well.”
The coroner’s office would have to have a space for investigations and the forensic pathologists to do autopsies, Piper said.
Including it within the justice center would not work because it needs to have a separate air re-circulation system to prevent odors from spreading within the building, he said.
Renting space from other counties would not work either because the county needs to remain independent. Sharing a coroner’s office would add uncontrolled variables to a case, such a homicide case set to go to trial, he said.
“You don’t need a big space. You just need to house your coolers, house the capability of doing your autopsies, and that’s pretty much it. We’re not talking 10,000 square feet or anything like that. A couple thousand square feet or slightly under would work perfectly fine.
“Put up a pole barn somewhere, and in one section of it, maybe have a finished space for a small office. But as long you can heat it, that’s all that matters. I don’t need fancy. I just need an area to be set up,” he said.
The way forward
Commissioner Jerry Pittman said a consensus should be developed among voters before the commissioners proceed with any plan for the courthouse.
“We’ve done some study on this. We know we have issues with enough space. We’ve run out of space. It will cost taxpayers if we build anything new or do anything very substantial in a way to improve our space needs,” he said.
“I said I would not support going forward unless we had a consensus of Brown County people, at least 51 percent, who want us to go that direction. I don’t want a remonstrance. I don’t think you want to do a remonstrance. If there’s not a consensus, I don’t want to go forward with it. But we have problems, and I think the general public needs to understand what our problems are space-wise and what we’re looking at. It seems like every month, we have another space need that comes up.”
