T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — A recent view of the Marshall County Courthouse, which has been closed to the public since it was badly damaged in the 2018 tornado and is set to reopen later this month.

At long last, the official, full-fledged return to the Marshall County Courthouse for employees and the public is within sight, but once again, it will have to wait a little longer.

During Wednesday morning’s regular supervisors meeting at the Sheriff’s Office complex, County Buildings and Grounds Director Lucas Baedke brought the board up to speed on several developments with the courthouse, including a request from the courts to increase the public counter height at a cost of $56,437.50, all of which would fall on the county to pay itself, after Carol Haney raised the issue at a previous meeting.

Baedke advised the board against affirming the request, arguing it wasn’t a top priority and could delay the project schedule by two to three months.

“In my opinion, the request to have a higher counter to interact with people isn’t overly necessary because no one is manning that station. They’re not there all day long. It’s a three minute conversation,” he said. “Personally, I don’t see a lot of reason why that needs to be a standing height counter.”

He also noted that the state court system does not have any funds to put toward housing their operations, and, in response to a question from Supervisor Carol Hibbs, said he did not believe it would prevent anyone from being able to do their jobs. Larger books that need to be passed to abstractors, Baedke contended, could be transferred through the entry doors.

The board did not take any action on the request and then moved on to a discussion of acquiring benches for four courtrooms. Baedke had previously arranged a contract with Iowa Prison Industries and placed an order for $14,550, but after two employees of the Anamosa State Penitentiary were murdered by inmates attempting to escape in 2021, much of that work was shut down as a result, leaving customers like Marshall County in limbo.

Since then, Baedke has been exploring other options and has reached out to a couple of other companies, but the cheapest bid was around $35,000, more than double the original price from IPI, with a wait time of 12 to 14 months.

The original $14,550 is covered under the insurance settlement with EMC, but anything beyond that might require an additional request from the company. Nonetheless, there are other options in the short-term, as Baedke said cleaning out a storage pod last week revealed that “we have a lot of chairs.”

“What we have won’t be super pretty for that time frame, but it’s something that can solve that issue,” he said.

He did warn, however, that the county had reached a point where they needed to “pull the trigger” on something, and Baedke suggested taking the chairs currently in the new board of supervisors room to the courtroom area because they would be less likely to be “used as a weapon or destroyed” than the older, more historic chairs that could be moved back to the supervisors room.

Baedke then recommended moving forward with a quote from New Holland Church Furniture, based in New Holland, Pa., for eight benches at a cost of $35,946.97. A motion from Hibbs to proceed with the next steps in making the purchase from New Holland carried unanimously.

In the meantime, Baedke jokingly recommended that those in the room “drive around and look for shuttered churches” that might have available benches.

During the public forum section at the end of the meeting, County Auditor/Recorder Nan Benson reported a one-week delay in the official move-in date because the state elevator inspector cannot make it to Marshalltown until May 18. If the courthouse was opened to the public on May 16 as previously planned, special accommodations would need to be made to service those who could not use the stairs.

As a result, Benson recommended postponing the move by one week and be closed to the public on May 18, 19 and 22, before officially opening to the public on May 23 and holding a ribbon cutting the following day before the supervisors meeting.

“Having our wonderful big project and being able to reveal (it) and not having an elevator doesn’t feel right, and we have different staff that it would be an issue for,” Benson said.

County Assessor Blaze Wurr commented that his office needed to be complete by May 31 to allow for Board of Review hearings on assessment challenges, and the board and county staff discussed other potential options within Marshalltown if they would happen to be necessary.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.