Justice court out of proposed new courthouse

HEPPNER – The Morrow County Board of Commissioners voted on Wednesday to remove the justice court space from plans for a new county courthouse. County Administrator Matt Jensen proposed the change, citing the need to stay under the project’s $35 million budget.

At the April 16 commissioners’ meeting the contracted design team, DLR Group, presented options to the board to help save the project money. One option was removing the justice court altogether, which is projected to save $2.5 million. The other option was to “shell” the land for the justice court, meaning dig out the land so it would be ready if the county decided to add on the justice court at a future date. That proposal would’ve saved $1 million.

Jensen stated that the justice court portion was added on to the project when the plan was to build the new courthouse in Boardman.

“We weren’t going to do a full judge’s chamber,” he said. “It was going to be a hearing room with an office for the judge. When we went up to Boardman it ballooned into a full justice system setup, and as we came down that remained.”

Commissioner August Peterson asked if they were at a point where a decision needed to be made.

“We can play around this for a while, for the next two months and then pull it out, or we can go ahead and do it and get this process underway,” said Jensen. “As the project goes on and on its just going to be more and more that we have to reassign if we have to pull it out. I’d rather just take care of it now and move forward.

The commission voted unanimously to remove the justice court from the project.

Graphic courtesy of Morrow County Board of Commissioners and DLR Group

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