The Marion County Board’s Building Committee is concerned about the Moose building that holds records for county offices. The committee met in the building Tuesday night and were shown a number of problems by Committee Chair Deb Reed and Sheriff Kevin Cripps.
“The southwest corner of the building, the concrete floor is actually sunken,” Cripps said. “I’m assuming there’s some kind of a sinkhole or something that has occurred under there, affecting the foundation or something to the building. I have huge concerns about the structural part of it, and then just different areas inside that are trip hazards and issues for the public that would come in, I’m concerned about the safety of our public.”
Cripps says there are also areas water is flowing into the building during heavy rains and what appears to be black mold on one of the walls. Fortunately, all the records are dry at this point.
A motion was made to have Shores Builders go through the building and complete a list of problems and what it would take to fix them.
Both the sheriff and County Board Chair Steve Whritenour say it may be less expensive for the county to look at construction a new pole barn structure at the rear of the county parking lot across the street.
“I think there are some immediate things that have to be fixed in that building,” Whritenour said. I don’t think that’s something that can wait a couple of years. Hopefully we can spend the least amount of money just to band-aid it to get us through until we can come up with more of a long-term solution.”
Whritenour says if they decide to construct a new building, they may be able to have space set aside for county board meetings so they are not borrowing rooms at the courthouse used for other purposes during the day.
Marion County bought the Moose building for $40,000 and initially spent $260,000 to make repairs before it was usable for storage.
