Maumee: Plans snag for expanded, new buildings

1/26/2005

Maumee is discussing spending $5.3 million to build two facilities to house its department of public service workers and its vehicles, and adding an extension to its municipal court building - but the plans are not without some difficulties.

The City Council's buildings and lands committee and its municipal court committee met last week to debate the tentative plans for the new buildings - a 44-bay vehicle garage and a 3,700-square-foot building to house service department personnel and administrators - and a 25 percent addition to the court building.

The buildings would be constructed next to the service department's existing facilities on about 6.5 acres of city land on the 200 block of Illinois Avenue.

Councilman Brent Buehrer, chairman of the buildings and lands committee, said he had problems with the proposed plan because it includes the service department directors moving out of the central municipal building into the new building.

He noted that while the buildings and lands committee will probably recommend constructing a storage facility for the service department where they can store equipment, it has not decided whether the entire service department and administrators should move out of their current location.

"We still don't feel comfortable moving the department without the city recognizing how they are going to use the vacant space," he said. He added that the tight space situation was created in 1995 when the city administration and the City Council decided to move the service department from the service yard to the municipal building.

He said that he doesn't understand why the city administration would want to move the public service department back to its original service yard and then expand the municipal court building by 25 percent to make additions.

the chairman of the municipal court building committee, noted that the added extension to the municipal court is needed because the judge and the prosecutor's office are in need of the office space. He said that the space problem arose when the city hired a second prosecutor who needed to be close to the judge's chamber.

Furthermore, Mr. Carr said that the new buildings are needed because "it makes no sense to me to have managers of the department and the other workers not at the same location."

Contact Karamagi Rujumba at:

krujumba@theblade.com or

419-724-6064