Missoula County has hired Architects Design Group, a Kalispell firm, to figure out how much office space it will need in the future and how much it will cost to build.
The firm is designing the Emergency Operations Center, which will eventually house the Missoula County Sheriff's Office,
Though the new location is only about a mile from downtown, it's enough to cause concern for the Missoula Downtown Association.
Moving government agencies out of downtown “can be the beginning to the end,” said Linda McCarthy, executive director of the Downtown Association. “It's detrimental from an economic perspective.”
It's too late to move the Emergency Operations Center closer to downtown because the county is too far along in the process. But what remains up in the air is where to locate the county's administrative functions in the future.
According to a three-year-old space assessment, the district courts, Clerk of Court's Office and County Attorney's Office will eventually consume the entire Missoula County Courthouse and its adjacent annex - where the county's administrative offices currently reside. These agencies include Elections, County Commissioners Office, Auditor's Office and Clerk and Recorder's Office.
So where do they go?
Well, that depends in part on how much space the administrative agencies need in the future. As more government services become available online - such as vehicle registration - it may impact the number of employees working in Motor Vehicles and the overall space needs of the department.
County officials have asked the architects to provide them with a cost estimate comparing the price of a new administrative building downtown - on a chunk of land the county owns near Woody and West Alder streets - versus including the administrative offices in the proposed Emergency Operations Center.
“The county has always been downtown and I can't say it will always be there, but we'll definitely have a conversation about that,” said Dale Bickell, the county's chief financial officer and future chief administrative officer. “There're strong feelings on how that should go.”
Yes there are.
Employees walk to the bank, grab a coffee and sit down for lunch near the places they work, McCarthy said. The national average that a municipal employee spends downtown annually is $3,000 to $5,000, she said.
It's convenient to have all city and county services in the same place so the public can do their errands in one spot. Plus, if municipal employees can walk to lunch or to the bank, it's less traffic on the roads, McCarthy said.
“If government pulls out of downtown, who else will pull out of downtown?” she said. “That's a vote of no confidence for the downtown.”
All three Missoula County commissioners have yet to make up their minds about where the administrative offices should go in the future. All are waiting for the cost report to come back.
Commissioner Bill Carey leans toward staying downtown. Not only is it an economic benefit to businesses, but county and city officials meet frequently, he said.
Right now, the city and county are across the street from one another and the Mountain Line transfer station splits them, he said. The county provides all employees with bus passes.
“It's important to the health of the downtown and less of a carbon footprint over time,” Carey said. “It'd be a shame to rely more on automobiles.”
Commissioner Jean Curtiss thinks it's important to share office spaces like conference rooms and bathrooms. It's fortunate that the county owns downtown property for additional office space, but it also needs to look at what's cost effective.
“I think it'd be more economically feasible to connect the administrative building to the Emergency Operations Center, but I don't know,” Curtiss said.
It's still unclear how much face-to-face contact the county's administrative employees will have with the public in the next 20 years, Commissioner Larry Anderson said. There are lots of issues to look at still, such as cost and parking and convenience to the public and county employees, he said.
“I'm still gathering information,” Anderson said.
He'd like the public to weigh in on the matter, he said.
“The geographic center of town is moving that way,” Anderson said. “I can see the cost and benefits of both locations.”
The architects will provide the commissioners with a cost estimate of bricks and mortar, but Bickell said the county will also weigh more subjective social impacts of moving out of the downtown.
However, the county may not have to decide where to put the administrative building for some time. If it's going to cost more than taxpayers are willing to pay, then the county may have to get creative to figure out how to accommodate growth with limited space, Bickell said.
The county managed to save $4 million from land sales at its development park near the airport to help pay for the Emergency Operations Center. There's not that same financial cushion when it comes to paying for a new administrative facility, he said.
The county is committed to building the Emergency Operations Center. The other “depends on what the commissioners feel comfortable asking on a levy request of the voters,” Bickell said.
The county should have estimated costs of an administrative building in both the downtown location and on Mullan Road within the next several weeks.
Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at chelsi.moy@missoulian.com.
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