Benton County officials to discuss courts building

BENTONVILLE -- Benton County's justices of the peace will discuss the proposed courts building tonight with an eye toward shaping the design process.

The Public Safety Committee will meet at 6 p.m. with the building discussion as the only item on the agenda aside from public comment periods at the beginning and end of the meeting. Pat Adams, justice of the peace, said he hopes the public comment periods provide the justices of the peace with some idea of how county taxpayers view the project.

"Whether they're nay-sayers or go-getters, doesn't matter to me. I'd love to have people show some interest before we get through with this," Adams said.

A study in January 2014 identified three sites for a courts building -- two downtown and one on Southwest 14th Street near the jail.

County Judge Bob Clinard favors the Southwest 14th Street location. He points to the ease of construction away from the congestion of downtown Bentonville and greater space available for parking and expansion. A downtown site also will have to make some provisions to keep the courts operating during construction.

The Public Safety Committee endorsed a downtown building project early in 2015, and the Finance Committee explored financing options. Work on the proposal was delayed after the six circuit judges sent a letter to Clinard and the Quorum Court opposing both downtown plans as inadequate.

The letter -- citing concerns over security, access for the public and judicial system employees, parking and expansion -- prompted the decision to seek a consulting firm to help with the project. Perkowitz, Ruth & Cromwell, the consultants chosen, presented initial findings to the committee June 7.

Clinard has set up a work group made up of representatives of the circuit judges, prosecutor, public defender, circuit clerk, county clerk, Sheriff's Office and Quorum Court to help set the scope of work for the consultants. The work group will review the three sites to develop criteria to be considered at each location.

Issues include the size of the building, traffic and parking issues, prisoner transportation needs and space for expansion of the building and parking areas. A new building is needed to house five circuit courts in the downtown area, now housed in three buildings, and to allow room for growth, Clinard said. A new building should begin with room for at least eight courtrooms and associated offices, based on population estimates showing Benton County continuing to grow rapidly for the foreseeable future, Clinard said.

"The circuit judges and everybody I've talked to say that could even be conservative," Clinard said of the eight courtroom plan. "We could even grow more rapidly than the estimates."

Clinard lost his bid for re-election to Barry Moehring, a justice of the peace who won the Republican Party nomination in the March primary. Moehring will face Ronnie L. Smith, the Libertarian Party candidate, and write-in candidate Jeff Broadston in the November general election.

Moehring has pushed for a downtown courts expansion project using current buildings as much as possible. Moehring said tonight's meeting is important as a means for the justices of the peace, who will have to approve money for any proposed courts facility, to express their views.

"Tomorrow night is basically the sounding board for the JPs to offer their input to the consultants as they move forward considering these various sites and building plans," Moehring said Monday.

Moehring said he has questions about the process as it has developed and as it's now proposed to be completed. He said he expects to have several questions to ask or issues to raise, but he wouldn't provide details.

"I think there are a number of factors that the working group are not taking into consideration," Moehring said. "It's a much more complicated problem than how many courtrooms, how much space and will it fit on a site."

Adams said he will continue to push for another option he favors -- moving the offices in the county administration building to a new location and locating the new courts building and a parking deck on the site of the county administration building and the old county jail, which is used for a few county offices and for storage space. Adams also said he's concerned the justices of the peace may confuse the issue if they insist on delving too deeply into details.

"To be frank, very few of the JPs have any knowledge of what the circuit judges and the others who use the courts building really need," Adams said. "That's why we have the consultants. I have no interest in how many square feet of space a secretary needs or whether her walls go all the way up to the ceiling."

Tom Allen, justice of the peace, said he hopes to hear from the consultants tonight since they gathered the information the design work is being based on.

"I think we should let them present to us what they're hearing from the circuit judges and other people using the building as to what they need," Allen said. "Then let us analyze that and see if we have any other opinions."

Circuit Judge Doug Schrantz said the county needs to keep in mind the need for a functional building that handles all of the circuit courts' needs now and can be expanded when those needs grow while providing for security, adequate parking and ease of public access. He points out the county has shown sustained growth over a period of many years, and as the county grows the judicial system has to grow with it.

"How fast are we going to grow?" Schrantz said. "You can argue that all day long. That fact is in less than 30 years we went from having two circuit judges covering two counties to having six judges in Benton County alone.

"They're projecting that Benton County will have a larger population than Pulaski County by 2025. Whatever we build, it has to be reasonably expandable."

NW News on 08/30/2016