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Courthouse storage costs rile legislator

By Melanie Lekocevic

CATSKILL — In his continuing battle against the courthouse renovation project, a Greene County legislator is now opposing the storage costs that come with it.

Legislator Sean Frey, who represents Durham, has been against the courthouse project from the very beginning. But the project is moving forward and recently the court was moved to its temporary location, at the former St. Patrick’s School building.

But while most of the furniture, files, books and other things have been moved to the interim courthouse, there are some items, like a large grandfather clock, that will need to be put in storage.

“We have a bunch of items still in the courthouse that need to be moved, but won’t go to the temporary courthouse,” said Interim County Administrator Dan Frank. “We will need to put those items into storage.”

Frank said the county will need two storage spaces — a standard storage unit and a trailer. He said that by using the trailer, the county will avoid having to move the items numerous times — loading and unloading them each way, from the courthouse to the temporary location, and back again — which he says will save money.

The charge to keep items in the storage unit for the duration of the 18-month renovation project will be $120 a month, and the mobile trailer will cost $150 a month, for a total of $5,000 over the course of the project.

Frey, though, is asking why the county has to pay those costs at all.

“The court said they would prefer to move out of the building while renovations were going on. We are moving their personnel, and we are moving their belongings. We are only responsible for the building itself, so why does the county have to pay to store their things, as well?” Frey asked.

Frank said that by moving court operations out of the 100-year-old building while construction is being completed, the county will speed up the process and save about one million dollars.

But Frey argued that the county has already spent $100,000 just to move the personnel, furniture, legal library and so on into the temporary location, and once the job is done, will have to pay again to move them back into the renovated building. And now to add the storage costs on top of all that, Frey said, only adds to the bill.

“Any money we can save on this project will be taxpayer savings,” he added.

But Frank said he has been working to reduce costs of the entire project, and that the $5,000 storage bill is just a small element of a larger plan. And, he added, there was money allocated into the plan for contingencies such as this.

“We saved almost one million in the temporary courthouse renovations by scaling this project down. We are working very hard to save every penny,” Frank said.

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