Central Ohio Real Estate Market News

As a Realtor® I tend to keep my political opinions to myself … don’t want to offend people. But an article in ThisWeek’s Delaware edition newspaper just can’t go without comment.

Last Monday the Delaware County Commissioners agreed to pay a design firm $501,000 to develop a “conceptual plan” for a new courthouse and related facilities. Now while that doesn’t seem out of the ordinary, consider that the article goes on to mention that the Commissioners haven’t determined if or when they would ever build such a building.

The accompanying cartoon was priceless. A “resident” was holding a piece of paper and was saying, “Let me get this straight - you’re planning to spend $500,000 to come up with a plan to decide if you should plan to plan a new county courthouse complex?”

The current courthouse is 142 years old and is too small, so since May 1993 they have been leasing space across the street to the tune of $21,310 per MONTH! OK, so they’ve already spent $3.7 million because they need more room. Do they need to spend another half mill to tell them that!

GEEZ- seems pretty obvious to me!  

In 2005, another county study called for the construction of a $56.1 million court building that would hold both the county and the Delaware city’s Municipal Court. But the city would have had to cough up $11.2 million for the project so they declined. Instead the city spent $1.2 mill to expand the Justice Center.

Can’t we use that study to indicate that more space is needed?

One of the County Commissioners, who supports the spending, was quoted as saying, “the $510,000 investment doesn’t mean the county is obligated to build the facilities”. Spoken like a true politician.

It would seem that there are other areas where this money could better be spent … like giving some of it to the short-staffed Sheriff’s Dept, so they can better DETER crime in this rapidly growing county … rather than building a larger building to hold the judges and prosecutors to DEAL with crime after it occurs.

Am I missing something?

A few weeks ago, another Realtor® invited me to a fund-raiser for a person running for a Commissioner spot in the next election. The invitation said “let’s bring reasoning back to the Commissioner’s job”. Maybe I should have gone.

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