With renovations wrapped up at the Knox County Courthouse, one big challenge for the county board to consider is where to move the IT department, now that the space they currently occupy is unfit as a work space.
Board Chair Pamela Davidson informed the Building Committee last night that the department was currently sharing an office space with the Treasurer’s office, she shared a suggestion with the committee, “…one of the suggestions was to relocate the Veteran’s [Department] to the Bondi Building.”
She said that the Veteran’s office was too small and privacy was a concern in that location. Davidson said that she presented the Veteran’s Department with some options for space at the Bondi Building and cost to rent it out.
She also shared another suggestion about moving Public Defender staff from the annex to the courthouse basement. This would put all of the county’s public defenders under the same roof.
No concrete decision was made, but Sheriff David Clague said he’d talk with the Knox County Public Defender David Hansen about moving his staff room from the Annex to the Courthouse basement.
One project that apparently didn’t meet the county’s expectations is also being revisited.
In November, the Knox County Board had approved the addition of a metal shroud at the Courthouse for a private, circular staircase used by the Circuit Clerk’s office after an employee nearly fell through.
It was deemed a safety issue, and the county hired Hine Construction to add a metal shroud to the staircase – however the county apparently was not happy with the end result.
Last night, the building committee discussed bidding out the work to be done in adding a new hand railing to the spiral staircase with Cody Basham with Klingner and Associates.
Committee members asked Basham to acquire more bids for the project, and even though they found the work unsatisfactory the committee approved the payment of Hein Construction for the shroud work completed in 2017.
The building committee did approve the payment of two bills related to the replaced furnace at the courthouse, as well as the emergency heating when the old system failed: coming to the total of $44,647.43 . And the final payments were made for the courthouse exterior work totally $34,006.80.
