GAINESVILLE – Overcrowded conditions at the Hall County Courthouse are only going to get worse as the area grows according to Hall County Commission Chairman Dick Mecum and something needs to be done soon.
“If we leave everything in the courthouse as it is we have no room to grow, we’re going to have to build another courthouse in the next two years,” Mecum told the audience at Monday afternoon’s commission work session.
“I’ve seen the hallways are jammed, oftentimes, with high court sessions,” Mecum continued. “I think you had five or six courts going on over there today, and I don’t know how many jurors you had in there, but it’s chaotic after a while.”
Mecum certainly has courthouse experience, spending nearly his entire career working in some arena of law enforcement including a stint as Hall County’s Sheriff and as a U.S. Marshall for the Northern District of Georgia before being elected commission chairman.
And he used his position as Chairman Monday afternoon to share his opinion on what he feels the courts need to do. “The courthouse right now is almost at a point of total dysfunction.”
Mecum, and his expert testimony, became part of an agenda request presentation being made by Reggie Forrester, Hall County’s Court Administrator.
Forrester appeared before the commission to request $174,300 to proceed with the next step in revitalizing the nearly-vacant courthouse annex on Spring Street – an architectural and engineering study – with the intent of moving both the Juvenile and the Probate Courts out of the overcrowded courthouse and into new accommodations at the annex.
Forrester said moving those two entities to the annex would extend the life of the courthouse.
“I think that we need 12 or 15 or 18 years left in the courthouse we’re in now,” Forrester said. “It’ll give future administrations and elected officials time to talk about how to finance, and where and how. Perhaps it may be at that time to move the courthouse complex away from downtown.”
Mecum agreed. “Where are we going to go? You’re landlocked down there. The county needs that 15 to 20 years to plan.”
Public Works and Utilities Director Ken Rearden said after the meeting when asked how much it might cost for the renovations necessary to move Juvenile and Probate Courts into the annex that the agenda request presented by Forrester was designed to provide that answer.
“We’re trying to get it below $3-million, possibly two-and-a-half or so,” Rearden said when asked again to “ball-park” a dollar amount. He explained that SPLOST VI and VII funds would be used for the project.
In addition, Rearden had mentioned during the agenda request presentation that inmate labor would be used wherever possible to significantly reduce construction costs.
Commissioner Scott Gibbs asked Forrester about that situation, “Are all the judges going to be okay if we do use inmate labor? Is everybody okay with that?”
Forrester responded, “I know we don’t have anybody in the court system that would have any objection to that plan going forward, and I think that it’ll put us at a budget that perhaps we can all live with and find consensus to go forward with this important project.”
Forrester ended his presentation by saying, “I do believe that this decision to move on this issue lays a long, solid road to the future for the judiciary in this circuit.”
Commissioners will vote on the requested funding Wednesday, 6 p.m. at the Hall County Government Center.
