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County solves storage problem with break room

By Joel Walsh - | Dec 12, 2007

District Court staff, Sheriff’s Office personnel and the Leavenworth Board of County Commissioners have laid out a proposal that would put to rest the issue of storing dead court files and would allow renovations to proceed in the basement of the county Justice Center.

Undersheriff Ron Cranor presented a plan to store the 16,050 linear feet of court files that had temporarily been stored in the basement of the Justice Center, in the building’s employee break room.

Cranor said that 1st Judicial District Chief Judge David King, Sheriff Dave Zoellner and a representative of Treanor Architects, the firm designing the basement renovations, met and discussed a plan to install 19-feet of moveable shelving estimated at $47,440.

Although there were some concerns about intruding into employees’ space, Cranor said, “the space in there was highly underutilized,” and rarely was there more than one employee present.

He added that the plan would leave 336 square feet of seating for Justice Center employees and would retain the break room’s kitchen.

Asked for his input, King said, “This is the most effective way, I think, to store our files.”

He noted there would be some expense included in the proposal but said, “It is one of the lowest figures I’ve seen compared to alternatives explored.”

In May 2007, commissioners entertained proposals as high as $900,000 to renovate the old jail north of the Justice Center and to build an addition to the justice center to increase storage space.

By state mandate the court is required to keep files on hand, in some cases up to 10 years.

King said that with the court’s current efforts to put files on microfilm, “We don’t see, in 10 years that, with imaging, (the number of files) is going to get any larger. Actually it should diminish.”

Once the court documents are moved, work to add a completely refurbished kitchen, a new work release area and a new trusty area to the Justice Center’s basement can be initiated.

In other business Thursday, the board:

¢ Voted, 3-0, to enter into an agreement with the Atchison School District to offer the district a truancy reduction program run through the Leavenworth County Juvenile Services department.

Commissioners also unanimously approved a motion to initiate legal cancellation of a contract with Health Care Professionals for mental health services at the juvenile detention center.

¢ Adopted, 3-0, a Web filtering policy that blocks employees from accessing Web sites that feature adult or sexually explicit content, gambling or games and prevents them from accessing Web-based personal e-mail accounts.

¢ Voted, 3-0, to extend a lease agreement for three years with Leavenworth County Senior Services for the Council on Aging’s facility at 109 Delaware St. The lease starts at a base rate of $3,095 per month and increases by 3 percent annually.

¢Met in executive session for 10 minutes to discuss potential litigation.

On Monday, the board:

¢ Unanimously voted to purchase and install a separate DSL circuit for the Emergency Management department’s emergency operations center and wireless DSL to cover the basement conference room at the courthouse.

The cost was estimated at $1,000 for hardware with a $30 to $40 monthly recurring cost.

¢ Met in executive session with Register of Deeds Stacy Driscoll and Human Resources Director Diane Collins for 10 minutes to discuss personnel. After the session the commission voted to move the Register of Deeds position from a level-4 to a level-8 position.