photo by: Douglas County screenshot

Douglas County Commissioners and staff discuss the county's proposed five-year Capital Improvement Plan during a Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022 work session. Wednesday's work session and commission meeting took place via Zoom due to water damage at the Douglas County Courthouse.

Douglas County leaders had a number of questions after getting their first look at the county’s next five-year Capital Improvement Plan on Wednesday, some of which were spurred by water damage at the Douglas County Courthouse earlier the same day.

At the beginning of a work session about the CIP, County Administrator Sarah Plinsky briefly addressed the water damage, which happened while a contractor was working on the building’s sprinkler system and forced the Douglas County Commission meeting to take place via Zoom.

Commissioner Karen Willey wondered whether the water damage would affect some projects that involve renovations throughout the building. Douglas County’s finance coordinator, Brooke Sauer, said she was unsure on that front. There will be insurance claims made in the coming days and other moving parts to consider, like getting a new projector for the space, Sauer said.

“When we’re replacing some of these things and working with insurance, how are we making sure that we’re getting the things that we would have gotten and looked at when we did the remodel for the second floor and the hearing room?” Sauer said. “That’s something that we’re going to have to be very intentional and very thoughtful as we move through that process.”

Plinsky, though, said she anticipated the damage to the building would be covered by insurance, and she didn’t envision any need to reallocate funds in the CIP because of it.

A lot of the CIP funds have already been reallocated for other remodeling work at the courthouse. Along with work on the second-floor commission meeting room, there are plans for remodeling work on the third floor and in the courthouse basement that were prompted by a 2019 downtown space needs study. Sauer said the last CIP set aside about $4.5 million for downtown space needs projects, and that money is being split up and allocated to the courthouse projects as needed, as well as toward the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, which is slated for an expansion of its own.

Another large chunk of reallocated funds — $5.4 million set aside as of 2022 — will be spread across eight to 10 other proposed projects in the 2023-2028 CIP. In the previous plan, those funds were intended to be used to reallocate space at the Douglas County Jail, but Sauer said the jail work would cost upward of $18 million to complete and thus was deemed to be outside the scope of the CIP. The reallocated money would fund such things as a project to restore stonework at the courthouse and another one to build a maintenance shop at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

Other questions from the commission involved the timing of some of the proposed projects. For example, Commissioner Patrick Kelly asked why the county was considering an HVAC replacement at the Douglas County Elections Office, a satellite office at 711 W. 23rd St. that the county is leasing. Jimmy Wilkins, the county’s director of buildings, grounds and maintenance, said it was written into the lease terms that the county is responsible for maintaining all mechanical systems.

Kelly also asked about an item included among the road and bridge-related CIP projects — a proposed project to extend Wakarusa Drive south and build a bridge over the Wakarusa River. He asked whether the county had any feedback ready to share publicly based on what was gathered at a town hall meeting about the project at the end of September.

Plinsky said the county was working on reviewing the responses from community members at that meeting and would share it on a section of the county website dedicated to the project when it was ready. Plinsky added that the county is still working on a letter to send to the Lawrence City Commission asking for clarity about the city’s position on the project.

County commissioners will get a chance to work with staff to answer any further questions during the next week, and a finalized version of the CIP will be brought back to the commission for a vote during its next meeting on Nov. 2.

Capital improvement planning is funded through a budgeted line item in the county’s general fund. Fund allocations are split between two departments: Public Works and County Administration.

Only Plinsky and members of the public who showed up in person to give public comment were present at the courthouse Wednesday. The water damage largely affected the commission meeting room, Plinsky said, and it specifically damaged the audio and visual equipment necessary to broadcast meetings from that space via Zoom. Plinsky said it’s not yet clear whether next week’s meeting will need to take place remotely again or in an alternate location.

In other business, commissioners:

• Discussed and approved an item pulled off of the meeting’s consent agenda — to waive the county’s purchasing policy for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office to purchase a new underwater search and recovery boat for $92,168.50.

Only $48,000 of that amount is being paid for by the county, Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister told the commission, and it was included in the department’s budget. The remainder of that amount is coming from the office’s own forfeiture funds.

• Heard a brief update from Plinsky regarding future informational updates about the Treatment and Recovery Center of Douglas County, which was a topic at last week’s meeting amid mounting tensions between the county and Behavioral Health Partners, the nonprofit formed by LMH Health and Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center to run the new crisis center. Plinsky said there would be a concerted effort to bring more frequent updates about the center to the commissioners moving forward.

Earlier in the meeting, a representative with Justice Matters spoke during public comment and said she was delivering 180 personal notes from organizers who are “extremely concerned” about the recent developments related to the center.