The county rents five of its service buildings. It’s hoped a new center will cut costs in the long term.
Perry County has received a $3 million state grant through the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program which will be used for preliminary steps in building a centralized complex for county offices.
“We’re playing the long game here,” explained Perry County Commissioner Brian Allen. “We’re not looking at next year, we’re looking down the road at lowering costs, because that’s the only way. It’s hard to do anything dramatic to lower your expenses in one year. This building, I think in the long run, will lower our expenses in more ways than we realize at this point.”
Certain departments will remain in place after a new building’s construction, including the courthouse and offices supporting judicial services. The voter registration office will remain at its current spot, and the county commissioners still will hold their public meetings in New Bloomfield, due to state laws requiring such business be conducted in the county seat.
“What the architects are challenged with is me saying, ‘We need X amount of square foot to house what we’ve got right now.’ We also need to factor in a percentage in order to grow so that five years from now, we don’t have to kick out of that building because we need to expand another agency. We don’t want to do that.
Watson also hopes to bring together human services agencies. “We want to try to bring in many of our human services agencies because right now we need human services. That’s what’s helping all of us. A lot of our human services aren’t here in the county. This is the first construction project the county has done in 30 years. The last construction projects were the Veterans Memorial Building and the prison.
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