Warren County government could be switching strategies in order to solve its longstanding issues with lack of storage.
The county Building and Grounds Committee met to continue discussions on off-site storage as a short-term solution and/ or construction of an on-site building as a long-term solution.
County officials added a third option: purchasing a property for relocation of an office out of Warren County Administrative Offices to free up storage space.
“I’ve looked at some existing buildings around town that are on the market and available, just to get some comparisons as to what we might have as an option,” said County Executive Jimmy Haley. “Of course, if we are going to build something, that’s a long process. I have been checking regularly on the National Guard Armory property as well. Using that for storage could be a possibility.”
Haley added a new aspect to the discussion, a state requirement for housing what could be sensitive government records at an off-site location.
“If we do off-site storage there could are rules and regulations on that,” said Haley. “I’m under the impression that we will have to have a records commissioner that’s in charge of those records. You can’t just let anybody and everybody in and out of the building looking through security information and everything that’s available. There would have to be someone in charge of overseeing that storage and there would only be limited people with access in and out of the building to retrieve records.”
Additional storage options are under consideration for Warren County Administrative Offices and Warren County Courthouse. Those records must also be stored in a climate-controlled environment with a sprinkler system.
“I guess it would be important to do discovery as to what the criteria is on off-site storage,” said Commissioner Robert Hennessee. “If it’s on county property, it would eliminate that necessity to do that discovery because it’s on county property.”
Discussion turned to the purchase of a building for renovation and relocation of an office out of the administrative building to free space for on-site storage.
“There are buildings and properties for sale,” said Commissioner Carlene Brown. “If we wrote out a description that we are searching for this type of building and gave it to all of our realtors, we would at least get an idea of what’s available. We might actually find something.”
Committee members approved a fact-finding effort to locate available properties for consideration during their next meeting.