“This is a living document,” Commissioner Rick Perales said. “This isn’t a one and done ... We want to be smart, but it gives us a roadmap to where we want to go and how we want to use our facilities, which is a big part of our operation.”
The plan previously called for a $23 million courts building that would consolidate all court operations on one campus.
Four out of five Greene County judges raised concerns about the plan in October, particularly in regards to combining juvenile and adult court operations in the same building, as well as separating probation from normal court operations.
Both of those are no longer happening. While the new court building is still planned for the general division, domestic relations, and other courts, Greene County Juvenile Court will stay in their current facility on Greene Way Boulevard, along with the juvenile probation department. Adult probation will move to the new court building instead.
“One of the things that the judges wanted was to be able to have access to that staff, so they’ll have access. But one of our concerns with the whole thing had been the security of probationers being separated from witnesses and judges,” county administrator Brandon Huddleson said. “So that can be done with separate entrances and that sort of thing.”
These changes will also result in about $10 million in savings on construction costs, Huddleson said, bringing the total cost of the master facilities plan from $163 million down to $153 million.
“The commissioners have two main responsibilities: to appropriate funding and to provide facilities. So this is them stepping up in a big way to one of their main responsibilities,” Huddleson said. “What’s kind of lost in this whole thing is all of the feedback, outside of those couple of concerns, has just been overwhelmingly supportive, that (county staff) had a voice in the process, and they’re being invested in.”
Another major difference is expanding the timeline for completing the first phase, which includes the new courthouse, from 2030 to 2035, Huddleson said. The whole plan would be completed by 2040.
One thing that has not changed in the new version is that the juvenile court’s assessment center, located on Dayton-Xenia Road in Xenia, is still slated to be demolished. However, the county plans to renovate the old Four Oaks Early Intervention center down the street to house the intervention center, along with the visitation center for Family and Children First.
The Greene County Courthouse in the center of downtown Xenia is still slated, in part, to become home to the county’s records center and archives, and the public will have greater access to the historic building. The courthouse will also continue to house emergency management in the basement, and will likely house other county operations or offices in the future.
“The plan now says ‘other administrative offices to be determined,’ ” Huddleson said. “What we looked at in our last discussion was possibly taking pieces of or an office or two that was going to be in the government center and put them in the courthouse to better utilize some of that space.”
Greene County is also in the middle of construction a new jail. The $74 million Gene Fischer Correctional Center, located on Greene Way Boulevard, is expected to be complete in 2025.
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