The Grays Harbor County commissioners will be presented with a 20-year plan that would centralize public safety services and provide a new jail, juvenile detention center and courts, District and Superior courts and administration offices for a combined cost of more than $56.6 million.
The recommendations would fulfill a settlement from June 2013 after Superior Court judges sued the county over what they said were inadequate and unsafe conditions in the county’s court rooms.
During a public meeting scheduled for Tuesday, March 24, the “Third Courtroom Committee,” formed as a result of the lawsuit, will submit its recommendation to the commissioners. The meeting will take place at 9 a.m. at the county’s administration building, and it will feature a short presentation by the committee. All other issues, aside from the recommendation, will be left up to the commissioners.
“The commissioners are going to have to talk about (it). This is a lot of money and they’re going to have to make decisions about how they’re going to pay for this,” Superior Court Judge and committee co-chairman David Edwards said. “Whether it’s going to require submitting a bond issue to the voters for approval, for all of it or part of it. The committee has done some research about how much debt could be serviced through sales tax increases.”
Edwards says that a third of the project could be funded by raising sales tax by 3/10 of a cent, as allowed by state law if the increase is earmarked for public safety.
On Monday, County Commissioner and committee co-chairman Frank Gordon said another 1/10 of a cent could be added to cover the juvenile facility.
“Sales tax is probably not enough to do the project, so we’ll use the sale tax to make payments on a bond,” Gordon said.
Though the committee has done some research, ultimately the commissioners will have final say on how the project will be funded.
“We certainly want to get as much information out to the public as quickly as we can and as accurately as we can,” Edwards said. “The commissioners will hold several public meetings to receive input from any interested sources.”
Gordon also said the county will be in communication with all of the invested entities throughout the project.
The project will be broken into three phases, including Phase 1-C, which will see the current legal library at the courthouse remodeled into a District courtroom, and the County Clerk’s offices remodeled into a third Superior courtroom, thereby resolving part of a 2013 settlement that closed a lawsuit waged by the Grays Harbor Superior Court against the County Commissioners.
The settlement stipulated, among other things, that the county must provide a third courtroom for Superior Court. The state Legislature approved a third judge in 1993 and the third courtroom has been discussed ever since. The “Third Courtroom Committee” also was established as part of the settlement. The committee is comprised of a co-chairmen of one judge and one commissioner (Edwards and Gordon), and includes representatives of the Sheriff’s Office, Prosecutor’s Office, the public works director, finance director, district court and other entities.
And while the third courtroom was the original purpose of the committee, ideas were brought forward by interested parties, each solving an issue (crowded jails, juvenile detention issues, courtroom problems) facing the county.
“When this started, it was a third courtroom project, and about three meetings into it, it became evident that the needs far exceed the third courtroom,” Edwards said. “We met every six or eight weeks and talked about what kind of space people needed.”
Edwards said that the overall price tag, more than $56.6 million, is an estimate and the committee hopes the project, designed by KMB Design Groups Inc. of Olympia with funding approved by the Board of Commissioners, comes in for less.
“We hope that the architects estimated liberally, and so if they’re wrong it’ll be a lower number, but we won’t know that until we get to the bidding phase of all of this,” Edwards said.
The project also would move District Court II from Aberdeen to the main county campus in Montesano. Edwards says the move has not been met with contention from the mayors throughout the county.
Once the recommendation is presented, the commissioners will choose how to move forward, and most phases of the recommendation could be nixed, except for the third courtroom, which is mandated by the settlement and will be created through Phase 1-C.
“I think the settlement agreement contemplates that the commissioners would take somewhere in the neighborhood of a year to go through their processes,” Edwards said.
Prioritization would be up to the county as well, Gordon said, but he believes the county will involve committee members in many future decisions.
“Everyone I’ve talked to believes the juvenile center is a priority,” Gordon said. “Judges and commissioners as a whole will decide the priorities.”
The other phases
• Phase zero — Phase zero calls for the demolition of the old jail, located north of the county courthouse. Demolition alone is expected to cost $1.8 million and includes environmental mitigation controls.
• Phase 1-A, juvenile — The first phase calls the construction of a new three story building at the site of the old jail. The building will house juvenile services including courts, administrative offices, and the detention center. In doing so, the current detention center at Junction City would be rendered obsolete, however, recent discussions have revealed that the current detention facility should be replaced.
“Right now the detention center is right along the banks of the Chehalis River in Aberdeen, and we have been told fairly recently that in the event of a significant earthquake along the Washington Coast, if a tsunami resulted from that, that building would be in a very high danger zone,” Edwards said. “Plus, it’s getting closer to the river every year by about 10 feet. There are lots of problems with that building.”
Building the new facility will cost nearly $14 million according to current estimates.
• Phase 1-B, jury assembly and sheriff administration — This phase would construct an additional three-story building where the current courtyard sits between the courthouse and the County Administration Building. That building would house jury assembly rooms as well as administration offices for the Sheriff’s Office, costing more than $2.9 million. The jury assembly rooms are important, Edwards said.
“Right now if you’re up here on a Tuesday morning which is when we typically start jury trials, the hallways are just filled with prospective jurors because we have just no place to put them,” Edwards said. “That means we don’t have any way to be sure that they’re not going to have contact with witnesses or defendants or lawyers — there’s just no way to prevent the inadvertent contact that’s taking place. Most counties, if they have more modern facilities, have what they call jury assembly rooms.”
• Phase 1-C, courtrooms.
• Phase 2, new adult detention jail — A new jail would be created on the north end of the county campus (Spruce Avenue), and east of where the old jail (the defunct jail tabbed for demolition in phase zero) now stands. The new jail, at a cost of more than $18 million, would bring additional beds to the county’s detention system. Following completion of the new jail, all of the county’s prisoners will be transferred and housed there during Phase 3.
• Phase 3, jail and sheriff admin remodel — Phase 3 would require nearly $18.5 million to complete. The adult jail currently in use at the county campus would undergo a remodel, and prisoners then will be transferred back. The building also will house administrative offices for the Sheriff’s Office.
The current time line shows the final phase reaching completion in 2035.
The committee had hoped to have a recommendation by September 2014, however all designs where not available for consideration by that date.
March 24 will mark the completion of the committee’s obligation, Edwards said.
“All of this is going to become the commissioners’ project after March 24,” he said.
“The sheriff and I and all the other members of the committee will certainly work closely with the commissioners as they ask us for input, but the primary responsibility for moving this project forward after March 24 will transfer to the commissioners.”
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