EDITORIAL/1 step forward, 2 steps back?

When the Madison County Board of Supervisors meets next week, it’s possible they will take action on future office space for the District Attorney, Tax Assessor and Tax Collector.

Supervisors don’t have the greatest history when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, evident by the many boondoggles over the last two decades. Earlier this summer, though, they took a gigantic leap forward when they decided to invest in major transportation projects that will clear up traffic congestion and spur economic development. Taxpayers everywhere should rejoice over this investment because, for some, that hour-long commute could easily be cut in half when complete.

Now, the question is — after taking one step forward, will the board will take two steps back?

The District Attorney’s Office hasn’t had a permanent home since their office in Canton flooded a few years ago. After having to work criminal trials in the upstairs hallway of the courthouse, they finally were able to convince supervisors to lease space in Madison. This was after an attempt failed to purchase a $3 million office in Madison.

Board President Gerald Steen wants to spend $6 -8 million to build a DA annex on the courthouse property in addition to the $16 million committed for courthouse renovations. District 4 Supervisor Karl Banks and District 5 Supervisor Paul Griffin would rather renovate the old Fred’s building across the street which the county bought and has rehabbed to house the DA. The problem is, it’s too small.

The DA’s office is currently operating within 6,500 square feet. To just renovate the Fred’s and lose nearly 2,000 square feet of office space, the county would be spending a little over $2 million. To add to the Fred’s building to give the DA 6,500 square feet of office space, it would cost an estimated $3.5 million.

Banks and Griffin want the DA to be in the county seat and have made that very clear, despite the DA saying the majority of their cases come from the southern end of the county and the Madison office is more centrally-located.

Meanwhile, the Tax Assessor and Tax Collector say their Madison office space is too small to serve the taxpayers and the space isn’t functional. The old bank building off U.S. Highway 51 is one of the aforementioned boondoggles by the board, because when it was bought it was too small at the time. Instead of spending money to build space — which at that time (pre-COVID) would have cost $2-3 million — the county spent $2.3 million on the old bank and said it would serve the citizens for two decades. That didn’t even last a decade, as Tax Assessor Norman Cannady said he’s been trying to get a solution for several years now.

His solution is to buy property next to the current location and build, with County Administrator Greg Higginbotham saying that would cost around $500 per square foot (not counting the price of the land). That means the county would spend millions of dollars to build another complex for the Tax Assessor and the Tax Collector.

District 1 Supervisor Casey Brannon made a suggestion at a June board meeting that should be taken seriously. He suggested the county try and buy the current office building the DA is housed in for around $3 million — less than it would cost to add space to the Fred’s building. The current DA building has a first floor with another tenant and another 6,500 square feet of office space that could be used to house back-end employees of the Tax Assessor and Tax Collector.

Kill two birds with one stone, or in this instance, for only $3 million.

Steen is going to end up the tiebreaker in this instance, and if history is any indicator of the future, he will likely side with the Democrats, Banks and Griffin, to spend more money than necessary to find a workable solution. He was against buying the old bank building back in 2013, but that’s when he wasn’t voting in a 3-2 majority with the Democrats. In 2013, Steen was a fiscal conservative, so it’s possible he returns to his roots.

We Madison countians finally have a transportation improvement plan we can celebrate and not one that enriches only the engineers. We are looking at expanding broadband countywide to give everyone access to high-speed internet. We have Amazon coming and future expansions to celebrate, too. It’s time to keep moving forward and not just taking one step forward to take two steps back.