BENTONVILLE — County offices have been a fixture on or near the Bentonville square for decades, but that could become just another part of the county’s history.
County Judge Bob Clinard has been busy during his first 18 months in office shuffling county employees from one location to another, trying to get offices into county-owned buildings as a cost-saving measure. In the long run, the county might be better off starting from scratch in a new location, Clinard said.
Clinard has spoken of building a county “Justice Complex” to house the circuit courts and related offices near the new Juvenile Justice Center on county land on Southwest 14th Street. He said the age and structural limitation of the Benton County Courthouse, which was built in 1928, makes such a move more likely.
“That old courthouse is functionally obsolete,” Clinard said. “As a courthouse, it was designed and built to have one courtroom. Now we’ve got it up to four with two more satellite courtrooms across the street from it. We might have another circuit judge here in a couple of years, and we’d have to have another courtroom plus offices for the judge and staff. We don’t have any place to put another courtroom right now. We’d have to buy or lease space.”
Clinard has formed an advisory committee to look at moving county offices or keeping them downtown. The committee includes representatives of the sitting circuit judges, other county officials who are involved in the courts system, city officials and representatives from the business community. The group has had one meeting, Clinard said, at which he presented his thoughts on the issue and asked for feedback. Other meetings will follow as needed, he said.
Circuit Judge Doug Schrantz said the first meeting was “kind of a brainstorming session.”
“We were just trying to decide what the possibilities are, what the thoughts of the different segments of the community are,” Schrantz said.
Schrantz, who has a courtroom and office across Central Avenue from the courthouse, said the committee discussions can be a starting point for a larger discussion if the idea takes on more substance. He said similar proposals have been brought up in the past, but none ever moved forward.
“It has not been done, and that’s a shame when you look at the situation we’re in,” Schrantz said. “I’m in pretty good shape here, but I’m in a leased space and the judge is wanting to get out of leased office space. There would definitely be some economy of space and security if the county went to a justice complex instead of having the courts spread out in three different buildings.”
“The sense of the judges seems to be that we all think we need to be on one location with the prosecutors, along with the court clerk’s and the county clerk’s people. Some people in their offices do a lot of other things, so there might be some sentiment for having them downtown.”
Prosecutor Van Stone said he hasn’t been involved in any discussions of a courts complex, although he agreed with the assessment of the courthouse as being inadequate. He said the consensus of opinion regarding moving the court activities might vary from day to day.
“On a heavy arraignment day, when our people are flowing out into the streets, you might say ‘yes,’” Stone said. “On a Friday afternoon when there’s not much going on, you might say ‘no.’ That being said, there’s a lot of activities going on around the square that weren’t there five or six years ago. The people who sponsor those events have been very good about accommodating our needs so far.”
Stone said finances will play a large part in any discussion.
“I can see aspects of the situation where moving the courts might be desirable,” he said. “At the same time, the financial aspect may preclude us from doing things in the near term. It’s way too early to talk specifics.”
Justice of the Peace Dan Douglas said he might support moving the courts and related offices to a single justice complex, but he balked at the idea of moving other county offices.
“This has been brought up by the county judge for discussion, and there’s some merit for discussion of a possible future courts building or justice center because in another couple of years we’re probably going to be getting another circuit judge,” Douglas said Friday. “We have to spend a lot of money on security for all of these courtrooms, and a good, well thought out building could save us some money.
“My opinion on moving the other county offices? Horse hockey. We’ve got perfectly good buildings where we’re at. We don’t need to be reinventing the wheel. We’ve got a good county administration building, and if we did move the courts out of the old courthouse, we’d free up some room there.”