Old business, new business at odds in Commissioners Court priorities right now…
If you’ve been inside the Presidio County courthouse in the last ten years you know that the air conditioning and heating hasn’t been working well. If you’ve been in the last two years you know it hasn’t been working to much of any extent. And if you’ve been in the courthouse in the last year you know that it no longer works at all.
If you’ve been to the County Courthouse Annex building B in Presidio for a Commissioners Court meeting or to visit the JP office or the County Attorney’s Presidio office you may have noticed the building is mostly vacant and that the JP court has been moved to building C, despite the fact that the courtroom is in building B.
If you’ve tried to take the elevator at the Presidio County courthouse in the last decade or so you may have noticed a sign on the wall that says “capacity 13 persons” and the one beneath it that says “please limit the elevator to four persons”. In the last month the elevator has been out of order more often than it has been working.
I could go on with more examples of deferred maintenance or failing facilities, but my point is not to dwell on these things but to try to communicate what we’re trying to do to get our house(s) back in order and how to get there.
I took office in January 2015 as a Presidio County official and many of the same issues with the courthouse, the jail and the courthouse annex building were problems then. Some measures were taken on several occasions to deal with some of these problems. Some cost a good bit of money, many were cheaper alternatives to a permanent fix or solution. I would say that nearly all the decisions made were made in an effort to save money and get good results.
What wasn’t made, with the exception of new HVAC for the jail, were decisions to rebuild systems from the ground up that were deficient or beyond their useful life.
What I have pledged to my colleagues and constituents to do this year is make decisions by consensus of the court and implement the processes to do the following:
Replace the HVAC system in the Presidio County Courthouse with a new chiller/heater plant and repair the air circulating systems within the courthouse.
Renovate the elevator with new control systems and a complete rebuild of the mechanicals, reusing the car, shaft and hydraulic piston.
Rebuild the Courthouse Annex roof and walls that were built improperly, which caused the rot and mold that has made the building partially unusable
A new roof for the Presidio County Jail that complies with the recommended membrane from our Design/Architecture/Engineering study from a few years back.
Continue to renovate and repair the courthouse roof with an ongoing repair/resurface procedure we started this year. Redoing of flashing, clearing drain channels and replacing dried sealants every five years. We did the West side this year, the East side will be completed this year.
There’s a faction of Commissioners Court that is more focused on beginning new projects through grant partnerships (a nice idea, I agree) but I believe that before we can embark on any new concepts, obligations or projects we must get our house(s) in order first. This year will be the year to get this started, if not finished. We have financial challenges and our priorities must be in line with our first obligations to our citizens, our services we must provide by law, our staff and our history.
I’ll write more on this over the next few weeks but I need the support of the community to emphasize the importance of the functionality of our existing systems and assets.
Thank you for reading this-
Sincerely,
David