Commissioners debate Justice Center expansion

COEUR d’ALENE — After a tense Monday night meeting during which Kootenai County commissioners sparred over the cost of the ongoing Justice Building expansion, the board will decide today how to fund the capital project — or whether to halt it entirely.

About 40 community members gathered Monday for the special meeting, among them, among them county elected officials and judges.

The county broke ground in September on a 60,000-square-foot expansion to the Justice Building, which will add three courtrooms and facilities for the Sheriff’s Office, district court employees, prosecutors and other county staff. But last week, Commissioner Bruce Mattare called for the board to reevaluate the scope of the project amid rising costs.

“It’s important you understand its potential to reduce our cushion of savings to the point that it virtually eliminates any margin for error,” Mattare said Monday.

In 2022, the Justice Building expansion was estimated to cost around $22 million — an estimate reportedly reached by architects, not contractors. Since then, the total cost has grown to $38.3 million, though general contractor Bouten Construction indicated Monday that the work so far has cost about $900,000 less than expected.

Kootenai County has committed $28.2 million to the project, including $24 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds and about $782,000 from the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund.

The county has identified about $9.8 million in potential funding sources, which would be reallocated from different county funds. That leaves a shortfall of about $273,000.

Commissioner Leslie Duncan said she supports paying only for the services that governments are required to provide by statute. That, she said, is why she has long championed the Justice Building expansion.

“It is a necessary and ugly component of government to take money from people to provide these services, but justice services are the reason why America is the way it is,” she said.

Kootenai County has 17 judges and 14 courtrooms, one of which is located at the jail. Only four of the existing courtrooms are suitable for jury trials. This creates challenges and delays when scheduling trials, which Duncan said runs afoul of the Constitutional right to a speedy trial.

Duncan said she also supports funding jail pods at the Kootenai County Jail but believes the Justice Building must take priority. The cost, she said, will always be a bitter pill to swallow, but delays will only increase the price.

“It’s a huge, huge project,” she said. “I wouldn’t even entertain it if it wasn’t desperately necessary at this point.”

After commissioners approved a $35 million price tag for the project in March, Finance Director Brandi Falcon said a $38 million figure was sometimes floated around in email conversations. In offline discussions, she said she was always reassured that $35 million was the correct price.

“As I saw these work packages begin to come in the fall, I started to get concerned things were not happening like I thought they were going to,” she said.

The $38 million figure turned out to be inclusive of “soft costs” related to architectural planning, permits and more.

“We were operating off information that was piecemealed to us,” Falcon said. “Going forward, I hope we have better communications.”

Judges Barry McHugh and Mayli Walsh both told commissioners that more space is needed in the Justice Building, where court staff and judges are sharing office space and some employees, including prosecutors, are working out of windowless closets.

“I would like to ask you to make the tough decision to make sure the sheriff and the courts have adequate space to do good work for the citizens of Kootenai County,” Walsh told commissioners.

Mattare has floated the possibility of scrapping plans for the building’s fourth floor, which is meant to house the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office, a move that would reportedly save about $3 million.

Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Stan Mortensen urged commissioners not to do so Monday. He said some attorneys have declined job offers because the space is so tight.

“I implore the board to find the money to fund the entire building,” he said. “This is a public safety issue. If I don’t have room for my attorneys to operate, it’s going to affect the public and it’s going to cost people in the long run.”

Commissioner Bill Brooks, who has consistently opposed spending the bulk of the county’s ARPA allotment on the Justice Building, said he feels the project was rushed.

“People couldn’t get a shovel in the ground fast enough and that was too bad,” he said Monday. “I don’t like that kind of government. I like when people can make their objections known or their support.”

To slam the brakes on the project now would likely cost the county millions due to already-signed contracts, county legal counsel Pat Braden said.

Both Brooks and Mattare said they believed the process wasn’t sufficiently transparent.

“The issue is not the Justice Center expansion,” Mattare said. “The issue is the communication breakdown. That breakdown has led this board to make multimillion-dollar decisions under a false set of assumptions and we cannot reverse it.”

Commissioners will meet at 10 a.m. today to discuss the Justice Center expansion. They are expected to vote on how to move forward with the project at the 2 p.m. business meeting.