New Benton County Office Takes Shape

STAFF PHOTO JASON IVESTER Alvaro Ramirez with Laxen Painting works Wednesday on the renovation at the former USA Drug building on West Walnut Street in Rogers. The work is being done for the new Benton County offices for the Assessor, Collector and County Clerk, along with the state Revenue Office.
STAFF PHOTO JASON IVESTER Alvaro Ramirez with Laxen Painting works Wednesday on the renovation at the former USA Drug building on West Walnut Street in Rogers. The work is being done for the new Benton County offices for the Assessor, Collector and County Clerk, along with the state Revenue Office.

BENTONVILLE -- Benton County's new office in Rogers is taking shape and officials expect to open for business March 1 at the 15th and Walnut streets location.

"All the walls are up and they'll probably start painting next week," said County Judge Bob Clinard. "The IT stuff is in, the light fixtures are in. We're scheduled to move around the middle of February and open up by March 1."

The county bought the former USA Drug building in fall for $779,275 and earmarked about $200,000 for renovation of its interior. The county will consolidate offices that had been at Third and Poplar streets in Rogers and on Southeast 28th Street in Bentonville.

The county clerk's office will move its satellite office from Poplar Street while the collector and assessor offices will combine their operations from the Rogers and Bentonville sites. The Rogers state revenue office also will move from Poplar Street to the new building. The revenue office in Bentonville already moved into its own office on Southwest D Street.

The different offices have been allotted their space in the new building and are working out what to move, Clinard said.

"We're going to inventory what's in the old building and decide what we're going to move, what we're going to leave and what we're going to put in storage," he said. "Some of the things in the old building we're not going to need."

County Assessor Bear Chaney said moving his offices shouldn't be too complicated.

"The only thing we essentially have to move from one location to the other are the people and the computers," Chaney said. "The other stuff we can move after the first of March if we have to."

County Clerk Tena O'Brien said her move will be a bit more complicated because of the nature of her office.

"I've got a lot of archive records. That's going to be the biggest part of our move," she said. "We've got some big rolling cabinets that have to be dismantled and set up again and lots and lots of books."

O'Brien said her office will have to make the move during the early voting period for the Feb. 11 election on the county's rural ambulance fee and then the filing period for political offices leading up to the May primaries. The filing period begins at noon Feb. 24, she said. To minimize disruption and confusion she plans to limit filings to the Bentonville office in the County Administration Building and the Siloam Springs office.

The move into the new Rogers office should complete a series of moves that have gotten the county out of leased space and into county-owned offices wherever possible and into newer, more useful space in other instances, such as in Gravette where the county recently moved from an older building downtown into a newer space, Clinard said.

"We still have Circuit Judge Doug Schrantz's court in leased space that costs us about $42,000 a year," Clinard said. "The future of that will be determined in the process of the new courts facility we're looking at. The county clerk's Siloam Springs office costs us about $12,000 a year. They haven't indicated they're needing to move from that location."

County Collector Gloria Peterson said she thinks the new office in Rogers will work well for residents. She said she has instructed her staff to be more attentive than usual to comments from people who come into the office to see if there are problems or improvements that might be made.

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