The Marion County Board is moving forward on several projects including improvements to the security entrance to the courthouse, the county parking lot in the 200 block of North Broadway and a first floor meeting room and employee lounge on the first floor of the courthouse.
The board Tuesday night agreed to let Sheriff Kevin Cripps spend up to $7,000 to make the security improvements to the east entrance of the courthouse, well under the $200,000 proposal made by Ameresco.
“We are going to move the metal detector over a little bit and buy a new desk you can raise up and down. $1,500 or something like that for a nice desk, maybe install some plexiglass and put a [security monitoring] tv on the wall. So there really are no bids to get, just buying equipment basically and doing that out of maintenance.”
Cripps says by switching the screening process, security will be facing the Supervisor of Assessments office if an issue develops there instead of having their back to that office.
County Highway Engineer Mike McCormick is working with Gonzales Engineers to do further environmental studies on the county parking lot in the 200 block of North Broadway which was the former location of a gas station. He says while mitigation work was completed a number of years ago, more is now needed since the county board didn’t finish the project at that time.
“It kind of becomes a spooky thing when it’s something you are not familiar with, but it’s not going to be that bad. A lot of it dissipated, a lot was eaten up by natural sources, and things like that. It’s basically why the IEPA is saying get the boring.”
McCormick says because the county board is a government body they will likely be reimbursed for the additional study cost.
Building Committee Chair Dr. Creighton Engel reported there are five contractors interested in bidding on constructing the parking lot once the environmental hurdles are cleared. Board Chair Debbie Smith said when completed this will be a parking lot for those using county offices, but could be opened to others on weekends.
The board also approved spending up to $10,000 to install new vinyl flooring and paint the former county boardroom on the first floor of the courthouse. Engel noted cabinet work was earlier approved.
“That room will be multi-purpose. For training, meetings, and any other things that need to take place in the courthouse and to give the office holder more space, the ability to have training sessions and things like that.”
The room will also serve as a break room for employees and contain a sink and refrigerator.
The board also approved the purchase of ten new tables on wheels and a podium to improve the meeting set up in the new room used for county board meetings in the basement of the Law Enforcement Center.
The sheriff announced the new entrance from the sally port at the law enforcement center will open on Thursday. The parking lots at the law enforcement center are scheduled to be resealed this Friday.
The quote from Sheriff Cripps in the story has been corrected. We apologize for the error.
