NEPA Blogging - County Courthouse Plans Scrapped

Pretend for a moment that you are a County Commissioner who won election on a promise to reduce taxes by 25%, but after much review and auditing, you find yourself in a situation in which you have to instead increase taxes by nearly 50%. As should be expected, that announcment is treated with much criticism and complaint. When it comes time to come up with a plan for much-needed renovations to the county courthouse, one of your key stated objectives, do you:

a.) Embark on a modest rehabilitation project, with an eye towards keeping those costs under control.
b.) Utilize any of the many vacant offices which sit across the street from the courthouse square as temporary office space for departments displaced during construction.
c.) Plan a $48.5 Million dollar project (amounting to approx. 50% of the county's total budgeted outlay for the current year) which includes two brand new wings, and meantime enter into what appears to be an uncompetitive sweetheart deal with the owner of a landmark building downtown, who also happens to owe almost $270,000 in back taxes on said building.

If you said (c.) you might be the current Lackawanna County Commissioners. You'd get along well with them, at the very least.


Crazy-ass plans notwithstanding, the County Commissioners relented today, in face of much criticism (mine here) over the plans, and have opted to go with a less-ambitious $15 million dollar plan. For some reason, however, the one element of the original plan which they've retained is the intent to move the main entrance away from the architecturally-implied main entrance, and over to Linden Street, where the soon-to-be-demolised 60s-era annex currently is. They've got some sort of serious obsession with having the main entrance on the side of the building, I tell ya.