Published: April 24, 2008 04:03 pm            

JP says she can’t justify cost of renovation

By Kelly Young

kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com

Judge Teresa Phifer is caught between a rock and a hard place. As justice of the peace for Cherokee County Precinct 2, she knows how desperately her office needs a courtroom, but on the other hand she says there is no way she can justify the new construction now that she knows how much it will cost the county.

During last week’s meeting of the Cherokee County Commissioner’s Court, the commissioners were presented with initial cost estimates for the three projects, one of which is to convert the drive-through at Phifer’s Alto office into a courtroom. Mike Leinback of JML Architects and Wes McClure of Garrett & Associates General Contractors presented the court with estimates of $196,074 for the work in Alto and $858,362 for all three projects combined.

“I put in a request for a new courtroom, but now that I’ve seen the price, it just seems too high to me. I’m not a commissioner, so I don’t know all the details, but I don’t think any amount of use that I could get from the new courthouse would be worth that much to the county,” Phifer said. “But it’s hard for me to say that because I know how much I need the space.”

Because her office does not have a courtroom, Phifer is forced to get creative in order to make her docket work. Sometimes she holds court in the lobby of her building. Sometimes she gathers everyone involved in a case into her small private office. And for larger cases, sometimes she is forced to reserve a courtroom at the county courthouse in Rusk.

“I handle truancy cases for the Rusk, Alto and Wells school districts, and when you have the children and one, and possibly both parents, with them — you can fill up this room really fast,” she said.

Although the $858,362 price tag was more than the commissioners had hoped for — indeed more than the county had budgeted for capital improvements in this year’s budget — the court voted unanimously last week to seek subcontractor bids and continue the building process.

Leinback said the planned construction in Alto would add about1,100 square-feet to the floor plan of the building.

“If you know anything about the building, it began life as a branch bank with a drive-through facility adjacent to it. By enclosing that drive-through we are able to create a courtroom and create a pair of handicap-accessible restrooms,” Leinback said. “We’ve also created a tiny vestibule to make the building a little bit more energy efficient, which will provide a central entrance that takes advantage of the existing waiting room space.”

Apart from repair work, very little work is being done to the existing portion of the building, Leinback said. The waiting room, however, will be reconfigured by taking the free-standing counter and turning it to face the opposite direction.

According to Leinback, a big source of cost in the projects are the requirements that public buildings be designed to be wheelchair accessible, per the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“In order to use the building’s existing bathroom, it would be a very difficult route for someone in a wheelchair to negotiate, so the easiest and least expensive thing that we can do is just add two restrooms that are available to the public, and the current restroom then becomes more of an employee restroom,” he said.

In the next few months, once all subcontractor bids have been received and a guaranteed maximum price has been determined, JML and Garrett & Associates will again make a presentation to the commissioners. It is at this meeting that the county will decide whether the benefits of the three projects outweigh the costs.

In the meantime, Phifer will continue to make due as best she can.

“There are times when I can’t do some of the things I need to do in this building, but we deal with it as much as we can,” she said.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Kevin Pierce, who expressed strong reservations regarding the cost of the construction at the last meeting, was not available for comment Wednesday.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.