Machias courthouse plans revamped

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MACHIAS – Washington County can’t wait for the state court system to address space problems at the Washington County Courthouse so the county commissioners have decided to build their own office complex.

Commissioners William Boone, Winola Burke and John Crowley voted unanimously Thursday to “pursue the feasibility” of a new county office building on a 15-acre parcel of county-owned land on Route 192.

The building – as the commission and the county building committee envision it – would be the new home for the county clerk, treasurer, supervisor of the Unorganized Territories, emergency management director, probate judge, registry of probate and registry of deeds.

Commissioners’ Chairman William Boone said the Regional Communications Center, which will handle Washington County’s E-911 program, will remain in the basement of the courthouse, but will move from its current “cubbyhole” to the space now occupied by the registry of deeds.

Building and Grounds Supervisor Mike Ward said Sunday that the plan calls for him to retain his office in the basement of the courthouse and have a custodian at the new building.

No cost for construction was discussed during Thursday’s meeting, but County Clerk Joyce Thompson said she and Ward had toured the recently constructed state Department of Human Services and Department of Labor buildings in Machias.

After examining those buildings, they thought something in the area of 18,000 square feet would meet the county’s needs, Thompson said.

The DHS and DOL buildings were constructed by Machias Realty Trust, which is operated by Peter Soucy of Northern Maine Construction Inc. in Bangor. The state agencies lease the space from Soucy for $14.75 a square foot.

According to the building permits Soucy obtained from the Machias planning board, Machias Realty Trust estimated the cost to build the 12,000-square-foot DHS building at $600,000 in 1998. The 2000 preconstruction estimate for an 11,000-square-foot DOL building was $550,000.

But in 1999, when the state was considering constructing a new court complex on the Route 192 parcel, Regional Court Administrator Rob Miller told the commissioners that he’d received an estimate of $4.3 million for a 26,152-square-foot building on that site.

Boone said the commissioners don’t need to take the new office building to public referendum because the county doesn’t have to float a bond to pay for construction.

“We’re in a position, right now, where we can fund this because we’ve been very conservative and we have a good budget committee,” Boone said. “In three or four years’ time, we could pay for a new building and the state would still be talking about an addition to this building.”

Boone was referring to the county surplus, which was $880,699 as of Dec. 31, 2000, according to the audit report.

The commissioners’ vote to construct a new office building came almost three hours into their July 11 board meeting and just weeks after an architect hired by the state conducted an initial inspection of the courthouse to determine the feasibility of constructing an addition.

State Court Administrator Ted Glessner and Miller attended Thursday’s meeting and Glessner said the architect’s initial report on the project should be completed within the next few weeks.

The state is responding to the needs of the severely cramped 4th District Court and the tight quarters for Superior Court. The state would pay for the cost of constructing the addition and Glessner told the commissioners last year that the county might be able to piggyback on plans for the addition to answer its own space needs.

Glessner said Thursday that funding for the addition would have to be approved during the next session of the Legislature and construction would begin in 11/2 to two years.

Boone and Crowley were skeptical of Glessner’s timeline, with Crowley saying that the process is so uncertain that he believes it will take three to four years.

Given the county’s space needs, particularly those in the registry of deeds, the county can’t wait that long, he said. Registrar of Deeds Sharon Strout said her department has space to accommodate the next three to four years of additional deeds books, but would definitely be “busting at the seams” if it had to go another four to five years in its current space.

The vote to construct a new county office building followed the commission’s 2-1 vote to reject Glessner and Miller’s offer of a 4 percent increase in the $13,685 annual payment the state makes to cover the 1,204 square feet of space for Washington County Superior Court.

With the exception of Burke, the commissioners rejected that amount, saying it hardly made up for the 12 years that the state has refused to increase its rent.

Boone said Superior Court should have been evicted from the courthouse in 1991 when the state refused to renew its contract or raise its rent.

The chairman said the presence of District Court raised security concerns for county employees who had to wade through crowds that made it impossible to see from one end of the first-floor corridor to the other when court is in session.

“But this is actually a courthouse and people are here to go to court,” objected Betsy Crane, the president of the Washington County Bar Association.

“We have to protect our employees,” Boone said. “All the state cares about is the judge. They should have one security officer at one end of the corridor and one at the other.”

Boone and Crowley voted to raise Superior Court’s rent payments by 8 percent.

Over the past two years, as a committee of county department heads and Glessner and Miller worked on a plan to alleviate space problems at the courthouse, the Washington County Bar Association has told the commissioners repeatedly that it did not want to see the District, Superior and Probate courts split between two locations and that they wanted the registry of deeds in the same building.

The lawyers – many of whom travel from Calais for court in Machias – said they work on deeds research while they are waiting for their cases to be called.

Crane reminded the commissioners of the bar association’s position during the discussion that preceded the vote.

“As I said earlier, dear, we can’t please everybody,” Boone responded. “I’m not willing to wait four or five years to see this happen. I’ve waited for three years and I’ve held two public hearings and I don’t see how we can give everyone what they want.”