Court House Expansion

The Court House, which is over 100 years old, needs to be expanded again. Its first addition was in the early 70's. The records in the Clerk's Office (Deeds, Wills, Estates) and those the Circuit Court Clerk and Magistrate Court Clerk offices are to the point that soon they will be piled on the floors. The Assessor's office is also at the seams. Three alternatives present themselves: 1. Build up upon the 70's addition and make that even with the large court room and renovate the first floor to expand vault record rooms; 2 Renovate or tear down the jail and house next to it and use that for additional space; 3. Move offices out of the Court House to another location and use that vacated space.What do you think? No matter what choice we make, local contractors must be used.

Yes, electronic recording is underway, but this is done slowly and has to be coordinated with off-site climate controlled storage. I am going to ask all our elected officials to begin their thinking about these issues so that we are not led blindly into a solution that turns out not to work....such as we have seen with the sewer at Slatyfork.

The Commission will meet tomorrow with architects and engineers to begin the planning for a Court House Addition. Elected Officials have been invited to be in the process; after all, their perceived needs and perspectives are very important. As well, I think the public should weigh in as its your Court House too. There are many considerations to be dealt with: 1. Planning eventually for less paper in the future of the digital age but dealing with mounds of it now and limited storage; 2. Preserving architectural facets of the old jail and residence building but not be bound to keeping them as an albatross; 3. Paying for the expansion while maintaining the budget needs; 4. Not accepting bland design and accepting responsibility to participate fully in the whole process.

Your idea is an interesting one, but at this point, those various fees are controlled by statute and the different elected officials who collect them and must separately account for them.

Most money collected eventually goes back into the County General Fund.