There’s a time to get by on the cheap, and a time to recognize you get what you pay for. When it comes to building a new courts facility to meet the needs of Benton County today and tomorrow, we recommend the latter to county leaders.

Nobody can reasonably question whether Benton County needs a new approach to housing its criminal and civil justice system.

The courts are spread around different buildings. Facilities inside the 86-year-old courthouse on the square are inadequate for modern-day needs. The growth of the county’s population has forced the creation of an inefficient patchwork of courts

A major decision in the process of building a new courts facility will be location - either remain downtown or build out by the sheriff’s oftce and jail on Southwest 14th Street. But a recent report by consultants put the estimated price tag of any of those options between $49 million and $53 million. That’s led county leaders to focus on how the building - wherever it ends up - will be paid for.

That’s a smart approach. Financing certainly matters as county leaders seek out a new place to house circuit courts, prosecutors, public defenders and staff members supporting operation of the courts.

The price tags raised eyebrows.

“What they’re looking at is a 100-year building of monumental quality, like the current courthouse was when it was built,” Kurt Moore, a justice of the peace said. “We may want to look at a 25- or 30-year building that’s not necessarily of monumental quality.”

Moore and others are rightly weighing the costs against the fiscally conservative expectations of their constituents. It will be far easier to vote on a 25-year solution that costs much less.

But if the county leaders who built the existing courthouse had taken that approach, the county would have built its third courthouse since 1928 by now.

Even if county leaders decide to build the facility next to the county jail, the building needs to be substantial. With development trends, that area will eventually be as “urban” as other parts of town. It needs to be a building Benton County can be proud of.

Courthouses should not be a run-of-the-mill office building. In addition to the security necessary, court facilities need to reflect the serious nature of the life-changing decisions being rendered. If a county is going to have a “monumental” building, it ought to be its courts building.

Forcing Benton County to make do with a 25-year structure might be the easy way out today, but county residents shouldn’t have to come back in a quarter century to solve problems a forward-looking Quorum Court can resolve for many more decades today. In all likelihood, $50 million spent around 2014 is going to look like a bargain in 50 or 75 years if the money is spent well and with vision for the future.

We’re not saying the county should spend $53 million easily. Rather, county leaders need to look at construction of a monumental courts building as an investment the growing county will benefit from for decades. With that approach, getting as much bang for the buck is not the same as going for a cheap price tag.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/13/2014