Randolph County Courthouse: Catch 22
Much attention has been given to Randolph County’s efforts to cope with its aging courthouse (131 years old), from a randy group of octogenarian bridge players who put together revealing calendars to raise funds to save the structure:
[Get your own at http://www.courthousegirls.com/]
to an editorial from the Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, Randal T. Shepard, supporting the preservation of Indiana’s historic courthouses. The county commissioners voted to demolish the structure and look for other accommodations (probably not in that order), in June of 2005, but since then, 1 commissioner who supported the tear down lost his primary race to retain his seat on the commission. Now the Pal-Item says that further action is stalled until after the November elections:
Even though the commissioners agreed last year to demolish the courthouse, nothing more has been done to plan the construction of a new one or fix the old one.
"(Officials) don’t want to do anything until after the election," said Owen Griffith, a Democrat precinct committeeman. "It’s a big issue, maybe the biggest issue in the county. It’s a lack of decision-making."
Link.
In the meantime, local residents recently organized a trip south to Union County where renovations costing over $3 million have recently been completed - just to see what was possible. I am not an engineer, but in my view, the Union County courthouse was in much better shape before its renovation than the Randolph structure. The latest renovation in Union County was the most recent in a series of projects that have made the structure a viable investment for Union County.
The lack of decision making on the big issue makes current life at the courthouse a little uncomfortable. From the state of it, you can see that the county is unwilling to spend much money on it with its future unknown. They had to tear out the drop ceiling in the superior courtroom, and so far have not paid to replace it, leaving the ducts, pipes and wires just hanging about. It, of course, has no impact on the orderly administration of justice, but appearances are important. One might conclude after a visit to the courthouse that Randolph County government does not have its house in order.
