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06/28/2006: "CC Discusses County Space Needs"

With the pending purchase of the Carlson Building across from the Court House, the Council is working on future floor plan options for both the Court House and the Carlson Building. The Council has retained the architecture & urban design team of Tonkin/Hoyne/Lokan to come up with some possible options for both buildings, which were presented to the Council, elected officials and county staff members on Tuesday.

The presentation included two options, both of which would remodel the interior of the two buildings, and both required some moving of office occupants from one space to another, and from one building to another. Both options would be temporary solutions, that would only help to solve space problems for the next five years.

Option one at $422,250.00 was favored by the Council, and Option two at a cost of $812,555.00 was clearly preferred by a large number of the members of the law and justice departments, who had concerns about safety if the related functions of law enforcement and law administration and service providers were split-up. The concern was the lack of efficiency and issues of safety if prisoners and others in custody had to be transferred back and forth from one building to another.

Councilman Myhr said if a way could be found to address the expressed concerns, he favored Option one, and the Council agreed that further work should be done toward that end, to determine if there was a possible solution.

Councilman Ranker stated that he was leaning to Option two, since he did not want to spend a large amount of money on the Carlson Building (Option two), since he believed the County needed to come up with a plan to build a new building that would serve the administrative needs of the County in the long term, and that he hoped that could be done in three or five years, at which point the Carlson Building would be torn down.

Chairman Lichter said that it was the sense of the Council to move forward with Option one, as it is less expensive. Ranker then said he would agree with going with Option one only if the Council could address the safety concerns that had been expressed.

In the end the Council decide to continue the work session discussion on July 17th at 1:30. The work session is open to the public, but will not be a public hearing.