The Case For A New Sheriff's Office

The 911 radio equipment is in a second-floor women's room. The evidence sergeant and his squad are officed in what was a garage. The first floor hallways are so narrow, Chief of Staff Lisa Burley is worried that wheelchairs can't make it through without bumping the walls.

"We've put so many Band-Aids on this building," said Burley, who was making the case Tuesday that the Highlands County Sheriff's Office needs a new building.

The planned law enforcement office on George Boulevard, which is budgeted to cost $11.1 million, has become an election year issue. Candidates Ron Grimming and Mike Rowan have contended this is the wrong economic time to build a new office, and that it may be unnecessary.

"The hallways aren't ADA compliant," Burley said. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires public buildings to allow access to disabled people.

If Sheriff Susan Benton renovates the current building, said Burley, quoting an architect's study, it would cost $2,000 per square foot, because the ADA requires compliance whenever renovations are completed.

"We also have fire ingress and egress issues," Burley said.

"This building has gone way beyond what it was designed to do," said Mike Secor, president of the Highlands County Builders Association, who was touring the building Tuesday with Benton. "It's an extremely outdated and unmanageable situation."

He saw the 911 technology closet, inside the restroom.

"This is what happens when you're trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," said Secor, who also admits to being a Benton supporter.

Over the years, Burley said, groups like Leadership Highlands have toured the building. But they've not shown the information technology office, which houses five workers. Rob Jordan, the information services administrator, apologized for the mess. Printer cartridges, computers and monitors were stacked on the floor, next to their workbenches.

He can't reprimand his staff for their sloppiness, Jordan said, "because we have no place else to put them." There is no storeroom.

Even if there was, said Maj. Mark Schrader, it would have been commandeered by now for offices. On a tour of the sheriff's office, he showed a half-dozen conference rooms, garages or bathrooms which have been converted to office space as the sheriff's office has expanded over the decades.

Outside Jordan's door is the criminal investigation division, where detectives work. This morning, they brought in the four men suspected in a Tuesday morning Avon Park convenience store burglary.

One, said Schrader, had to be parked in one corner of the squad room, another in another corner.

Two suspects were interviewed in two tiny rooms, each barely large enough for a desk and two chairs. There are no interview rooms like the ones seen in the movies, with two-way mirrors where other detectives can watch.

Because the bad guys are sitting at desks next to the detectives, Schrader said, personnel are warned to limit their conversations until the suspects leave.

Other Problems

• One day, 911 communications administrator Bonnie Gregg heard alarms going off, entered the 911 radio equipment closet - in the women's room - and found water.

"About this deep," she said. Rainwater was pouring in.

• The evidence rooms are overflowing with 33,000 items, said Sgt. Jamie Casey. The proposed building would house all the evidence in one room, Burley said.

• The sheriff's office has been added to several times since it was built in 1941. But apparently, the sewer pipes weren't always capped properly, said David Flowers, the county's facilities manager.

"It was causing quite an aroma," Flowers said.

"It was making people sick," Burley said. "It was coming through the air conditioning vents."

Other Side

Grimming, a former Florida Highway Patrol chief, and Commander Rowan, Avon Park's assistant police chief, have said building new offices during a poor economy is not feasible.

Secor disagreed. A recessionary economy is a perfect time, he said, because materials and labor are cheaper now.

Rowan suggested other buildings might be rented.

County Administrator Michael Wright said he looked at converting vacant department store space while he was in Tallahassee.

"We couldn't make the numbers work," Wright said. "A 911 communications center has to be more structurally sound than an ordinary department store."

The building is in the capital financial strategy, said Assistant County Administrator Rick Helms, but the county would have to borrow to pay the contractors when the building is completed. "That's not an unusual occurrence."

Revenues would be pledged from the county sales tax, which currently brings in about $7.9 million a year. Those monies are also budgeted to pay for the Sebring Parkway and other resurfacing projects. The mortgage on the sheriff's building would have to be repaid before the tax expires, in October 2019.

Does the sheriff need more space at this very moment? Wright asked the question rhetorically, and he wasn't sure of the answer.

"But sooner or later," he said. "There's no question about it."

"We've literally run out of space," Burley said.