Some, not all, questions answered at listening session

WASHINGTON — A sizable crowd packed into the Washington County Courtroom for two hours Tuesday night for a back-and-forth with county supervisors about plans for a new government office facility.

The county has spent roughly the last year and a half discussing plans for its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, with decision-makers eventually rallying around a plan to renovate government buildings at Orchard Hill on the far northwest side of town, as well as the inside of the Washington County Courthouse. Opponents have proposed alternative sites, including at the recently vacated Federation Bank Building or the now-demolished former jail.

While that push that continues to gather vocal supporters, some members of the Board of Supervisors remain skeptical.

Every public speaker at the meeting opposed the Orchard Hill move, listing many of the same concerns they’ve voiced in the last several weeks. The list of grievances holds that a relocation to Orchard Hill would reduce downtown business traffic, jeopardize historic buildings with few non-government buyers, increase traffic to an accident-prone intersection, squander one-time ARPA money, and place county offices in smaller work spaces.

“I really feel like there is a solution that will address the space needs that you guys have, and address your desire to be under a similar footprint … without a very, very real concern that … we (are) going to see a second downturn in our community,” Washington Chamber of Commerce Director Michelle Redlinger said. “That’s a huge concern, and it’s a huge step backward from all of the work that we’ve done here in Washington.”

Other, new talking points were raised as well. One county resident said she worried strollers and electronic wheelchairs wouldn’t fit in the planned rooms, another said record-storing vaults would be cost prohibitive, a third claimed the county had insufficient input from its employees.

Joe Stewart, another public comment maker, said there were better uses for the county’s approximately $4 million of remaining ARPA funds.

“I know there’s a lot of farmers out there that would like to have some road work done,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of small businesses around … or organizations that could use it for their dealings, what they serve the public for.”

Where the supervisors stand

Two supervisors were strong advocates for the move to Orchard Hill.

Supervisor Marcus Fedler, who was on the committee which planned renovations, said Orchard Hill contained unused and underused space, and that renovations to move certain county offices there would consolidate space needs and ensure efficiency.

The county currently uses four buildings for office space: the county courthouse, Orchard Hill itself, the McCreedy building, and rented floors of the former Federation Bank Building.

“There’s 18,000 square feet out (at Orchard Hill) roughly, and about 8,000 of it sits empty, all the time,” Fedler said. “The thought process is, let’s consolidate into two locations … we already have the square footage necessary to do that, we don’t have to build anything new.”

While Fedler said he was open to better ideas, he remained skeptical of critics’ proposals.

“I don’t know of an option that really fits the bill,” he said. “Adding more space to the county by building a building or buying a building isn’t necessary. We already have the space, we’re not trying to build something new, we’re trying to use what we have.”

Supervisor Jack Seward Jr. said he had reached a similar conclusion.

“I’ve taken everything into consideration, and I still believe that it is the best thing to do, to keep county operations on county property, and not take any more county property out of the tax base,” he said.

Richard Young wasn’t at the Tuesday night meeting, but has previously signaled skepticism about moving county offices into Federation Bank, an often-repeated suggestion by opponents to the Orchard Hill option.

“People that talk to me say there’s no future growth at the Federation Bank Building … out there (at Orchard Hill,) there’s place to grow,” he said at a meeting in January. “We’ve got all that ground. I’m just saying what people have told me.”

Two of the supervisors, however, seem more hesitant to put their money on renovations and relocation efforts northwest of town.

Board Chair Bob Yoder said he thought Federation Bank was an ideal option.

“I just absolutely, positively like the location,” he said. “If we take it out of town, we’re going to take a lot of business out of town, from the downtown, unfortunately. Some people don’t think that’s much of an issue, some people think it’s an issue.”

Supervisor Stan Stoops was more vocal in his opposition to Orchard Hill plans, in a reversal from comments last week when he said he was on the fence.

Stoops said public opinion on the matter was too overwhelming to ignore.

“This is not about what’s reasonable, this is about what people want,” he said. “All we’ve got to do is go back to the drawing board and make it work, that’s all we’ve got to do. And we can make it work … we are at grassroots level, we can listen. We can listen to these people and we’re not, we’re choosing not to. I’m not going to be part of that.”

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Dept. head feedback, community input prove sticking points

Some moments at the meeting were more heated than others.

Supervisors said they were “insulted” by an offer from Redlinger to draft an anonymous survey for county employees about the proposed move, saying some staff may fear retaliation for disagreeing with decision-makers.

Seward said those staff should be willing to speak up.

“Do you think any of us here sitting on this board would put up for a retaliation?” he said. “Who do they feel threatened from? … We as county supervisors, I don’t think, would put up with that sort of behavior.”

After a work session in August, at least two Washington County department heads declined requests for comments from the Union on the proposed Orchard Hill renovations, saying they were “not comfortable” doing so, and that such comments “would not be appropriate,” although they did not explicitly invoke a “fear of retaliation.”

Some county officials at the meeting did voice concerns about the move, however. One was County Treasurer Jeff Garrett, who said he opposed the relocation, but had not heard of concerns about retribution.

“I have been part of a group of department heads that’s been pretty vocal about our desire to stay in the downtown area, but also realize if that’s not feasible or is voted against, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,” Garrett said. “All of us department heads would like to be part of the solution … as far as fearing retribution from the supervisors, maybe I’m just oblivious, but I haven’t felt that way.”

Washington County Public Health Fiscal Administrator Peggy Wood, who is not a department head but is a county official, said she had similar worries.

Under the Orchard Hill proposal, public health staff would move out of their rented space at Federation Bank, into a slightly smaller office area. Wood said the county should consider using the five-story building to lower the need for other renovations.

“You asked us what our needs are, but then there’s some constraints for those needs,” Wood said. “We still have concerns about certain things … being a resident of Federation Bank, I think we can change that narrative. We can say, ‘What is there, what can fit?’ We have just been focusing on (how) not all the county offices fit there, but there are things that can fit there, and then the plan adjusts somewhere else.”

Some speakers from the public said they were frustrated with decision-makers’ hesitation to change their minds about Orchard Hill.

Dale Torpey, who is a member of the Federation Bank’s board, said he felt like decision-makers were not listening to their constituents. The bank has offered its former building to the county for $800,000, an offer it refused after conducting a study of the space, which is smaller than Orchard Hill, and would likely require renovations of its own.

“We’re spending $4 million, or $7 million, or whatever you want to call it, and we don’t get to vote on it?” said Dale Torpey, who is a member of the Federation Bank Board. “And I understand about the ARPA, I understand how that works, but still, $4 million of our tax money, and we get no say in it. It just doesn’t seem right to me.”

Some board members took issue with that suggestion.

Fedler said supervisors were put in place to make the right decisions for voters, not necessarily the ones voters wanted to see.

“We don’t have a democracy, we have a republic,” he said. “It’s very important that people have communicated their desires, and their needs, and their wants, but … I want to do what’s right, always.”

Fedler added that he believed downtown businesses could rally if the office change deprived them of visitor traffic. He cited risk-takers in the community who invested in the square even after economic powerhouses moved out in the last three decades.

Torpey disagreed.

“About other companies leaving the town, we had no control over that,” he said. “This, we have some control over.”

Misinformation addressed, some confusion remains

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The Tuesday night meeting served as a fact-check for both sides of the debate. Information about the county’s plan has flowed piecemeal through news reports since ARPA-related debates began, a reality many said had kept them out of the loop.

Some of that information was straightforward: the county is not locked into Orchard Hill renovations by an architecture contract, as some previously believed. The non-county facilities renting space at Orchard Hill — which would be displaced by the move — comprise roughly 8,000-9,000 square feet.

The rest is complicated.

For one, county officials clarified the cost of the project. An August, 2022 feasibility study from Carl A. Nelson gave a total project cost estimate of $6.767 million to nearly $7.5 million, a range opponents said was unacceptably high. That figure, however, included renovations at the courthouse, Orchard Hill, and construction of a new building for the engineer’s office.

Supervisors at the meeting, however, said they had slashed the price since then by removing the engineer’s building from the plan. Fedler also said the county would pay for most of its courthouse renovations with preexisting savings by the county attorney’s office for that very purpose.

That leaves roughly $500,000 of Courthouse renovations on the tab, as well as the price of Orchard Hill’s rework, which the study set at $4.17 million to $4.595 million. The total price, therefore, would fall around $4.6-$5.1 million.

A planned budget amendment later this fiscal year will take the county’s ARPA fund from roughly $4.28 million to just over $3.81 million, according to the auditor’s office, as it pays a contractor for digitization of several records.

It’s unclear how the county will cover the price tag beyond ARPA’s reach. Officials said a bond referendum was required to borrow any more than $600,000, meaning the issue would go to voters who appear increasingly skeptical, or at least more vocal.

Fedler said such a vote was “not the plan,” but did not say how the county might otherwise fill the gap.

On another front, the county clarified which offices would move and where. Fedler said when the dust settled, the county’s public health, auditor, recorder, assessor, supervisor, treasurer, and GIS offices would find themselves at Orchard Hill. Its adult and juvenile probation, outreach, DHS, and Department of Corrections offices would move into the courthouse, where they’re more frequently needed in legal affairs.

The county still plans to relocate the engineer’s office, but would do so as a separate project, according to Fedler.

Parties also got to the same page on the scope of proposed renovations at Orchard Hill. Outside of public meetings, some advocates said they were told the buildings would be torn “down to the floors” and rebuilt, while others incorrectly assumed the county planned to build new structures. Officials have repeatedly stressed that they only planned to renovate, but were sometimes unclear about how much.

At the meeting Tuesday night, Fedler said remodeling at the facility would be extensive, but limited to interior work, with the possible exception of one new walkway between buildings.

“(The) wood trusses, steel roof, brick siding, terrazzo floor, would stay,” Fedler said. “Everything else would be gutted and remodeled to best utilize the space.”

Despite the numerous questions answered at the meeting, several questions remain. Fedler said he was not sure of the county’s total exact office space footprint, but said it used “something less than 18,000 square feet” in the status quo.

Questions about the cost of a secure storage vault — which would come with the former bank building — remain unresolved, as does the question of whether the five-story building would need sprinklers installed under government use.

The cost of building a new office structure north of the courthouse, where a former jail building is undergoing demolition at time of writing, is also murky. A letter from Carl A. Nelson to the county dated April 3, the company estimated such a building would cost at least $10.56 million, but some at the meeting said that prediction was misleading.

In its letter, Carl A. Nelson said it assumed the structure would have two stories and a basement totaling 27,000 square feet — considerably more than the county’s estimated current space — which it said could be used for storage. It also included the cost of both a passenger elevator and a separate freight elevator, something the county does not currently have.

Without those options itemized, Fedler said it was unclear what construction would cost if the county built fewer levels, or forwent a freight elevator, or used a non-brick exterior. Still, he said he didn’t see new construction as a viable alternative.

“The goal is to have as little impact as possible,” he said. “I think having more square footage on the county bill would then increase the cost of maintenance, and having a new building is going to require maintenance.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com