Recently announced, the AOC has indicated that they are reconsidering courthouse designs in Markleeville and Downieville, two of the many boonie-ville’s slated to get new overpriced out of character courthouses. To get an understanding of the challenges presented, just walk this way…
In Markleeville, the challenge is purchasing a big enough piece of land to build a new courthouse as most of the land is owned by the U.S. Forestry Service. Markleeville is largely cut out of the federal woods surrounding it. In Downieville, the situation is quite different. Though most of this county is also owned by the federal government and Downieville has about the same number of residents as Markleeville, the difference is that Downieville is a city built in a steep canyon where two sizable rivers join. Hardly anything in Downieville is flat and if it is, it is in the floodplain.
The Plumas-Sierra Courthouse in Loyalton costs a little over six million dollars and is an impressive, stylish state of the art building designed for snow country. Unlike many of the AOC’s other courthouse plans, it looks like it could be a part of the neighborhood (that is – if the Loyalton city flag didn’t appear to be the blue poly tarp but I digress..)
The challenge to building these small courthouses in rural areas is creating the three circulating areas through a courthouse that are required in the trial court facilities standards. For those not in the know, each new courthouse has one circulation area for employees, one circulation area for the public and a third circulation area for the incarcerated. Currently, in many of these rural courthouses, the Sheriff marches prisoners up the front steps and right through the public entrance of the courthouse right alongside the public and jurors because a hundred years ago, the three circulating areas was not even a consideration. So the challenge has been to have some form of holding and the associated three circulating area in even the smallest of courthouses where trials are infrequent or rare. Once a holding cell is installed in a courthouse, then come the expensive detention and circulation control systems and the three pathways through the building. In some smaller courthouses currently, they hold prisoners on Sheriffs department busses and process them in from there, utilizing the bus itself as a holding cell because some courthouses have no holding cells.
The question remains: Can the AOC take the Portola-Loyalton Courthouse (an award winning design by the way…) (image here)(Whole AOC image portfolio here) and make it so many feet wider and deeper to accomodate the incarcerated, either with bus holding or small cells and dual-purpose circulation? Rather than hire a seperate architect that wants to build an out of character building, consider the cookie- cutter approach of that small, affordable courthouse all over snow country where these one courtroom courthouses are needed? How many millions of dollars would be saved on design, while building a product that is more closely aligned and fits in the neighborhood it exists in?
What the AOC has done is a really, really poor job of is listening to the communities where these courthouses are being installed. Both Susanville and Mammoth Lakes residents have indicated that the designs for their courthhouses are out of character for the surrounding community. When residents railed against the out of character nature of the projects, the AOC acted like it is a done deal and gave residents no choice. This has created a lot of animousity in these communities towards the AOC. We’re glad to see the AOC reconsider the Markleeville and Downieville projects cost and scope as spending 49 million to serve 400 residents borders the absurd. This reconsideration however is not entirely the AOC’s doing. In both of these locales, land is hard to come by for out of character, oversized facilities and it was the courts themselves that suggested the downsizing. We suggest those same courts pay a visit to Loyalton courthouse and see how you might be able to make something like that work in your community – even if the occasional prisoner has to be processed from buses or video arraignment from the jails would reduce the courthouse costs.
Think outside the box “for the benefit of all Californians” and revisit all of these questionable, oversized, overpriced rural projects.
For the rest of you reading this: Both of the communites mentioned herein (Downieville and Markleeville) are bucket list destinations for nature lovers. Both are surrounded by U.S. Forestry Service lands and have very unique, small town california character all their own that should be experienced. Unfortunately, every one we checked with who visited Quincy or Loyalton in Plumas county claims the whole county to be a speed trap. One commenter went as far as saying “In Plumas County, if you don’t work operating a radar gun then you probably don’t work.” Given our internet reach, I’m sure the Quincy or Plumas County Chamber of Commerce is going to have a heyday with that observation.
Judicial Council Watcher 
Judicial Council Watcher
June 11, 2011
I wonder which AOC architect created this wonder – and if they will repeat the endeavor here in California.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/this-exists-glass-staircase-in-brand-new-court-house-proves-problem-for-women-in-dresses/
courtflea
June 11, 2011
Just a note JCW defendants must agree to waive their rights to appear in court for arraignments so video is not always an option. Busses? Have not seen that option in operation. However security has always been an issue in small counties, Siskiyou had a shooting due to lack of security and Calaveras had Ellie Nestler who shot the perp in her son’s molestation case in the courtroom. Another case in point for small rual counties having issues…look at El Dorado County. While they are not a two judge court, they have had more than their share of high profile cases…JC Duggard/Gurrido case being a prime example. I am sure there are many more cases that have problamatic for small courts that have not been so highly publisized.
While I don’t agree with the cost of these courthouses, I firmly believe that every court should have 2 courtrooms. Not doing so is very short sighted. Even in itsy bitsy counties, there may be more than one court proceeding going on at a time, especially since declarations of conflict with judges hearing cases in small counties is common, and another judge must be brought in to hear those matters. Not to mention a major case would cripple the courthouse facilities, and transfering them to a larger jurisdiction would cripple their budget. I really think that the locals are not thinking outside the box when they decry a bit larger courthouse as they are used to doing business the way they always have and are not thinking of the future. Populations in rural counties are changing as more and more people especially retirees move there for a lower cost of living
Just some thoughts from a flea.
JusticeCalifornia
June 12, 2011
Good Morning Courtflea
As pointed out in your last two posts, it appears that there is no question that it would be nice to have an efficient, financially sound, reliable, working case management system, but the proposed CCMS system as is and the proposed way of handling the system (out of AZ) currently on the table is not it. And there is no question that the current CCMS system has been grossly mismanaged by top court leadership –we have a thorough, independent state audit that tells us that.
Similarly, there is no question that it would be nice to have new courthouses in many counties, to resolve space, safety, health and logistical issues, but the current proposed scope, cost, and design of the facilities is in question, as is the prioritization of which counties need and get new buildings when. (I mean really, unless original estimates were padded, how does a proposed courthouse go from costing $1.2 billion to under $700K?)
The real issue here appears to be top leadership’s arrogant shotgun to the head, “our way or the highway”, approach to court priorities, and to very expensive mismanaged projects that have already gone terribly awry. So terribly awry in fact, that our courts have been closed to the public and are operating on shortened hours to fund top leadership’s fiascos. Key court services that are of vital importance to litigants are being denied to fund these fiascos.
For example, while it is true Ellie Nestler shot her perp, I am far more concerned that Katie Tagle’s little baby was murdered by his daddy, who repeatedly warned he was going to do just that. I am far more concerned about all the children who have been traumatized, beaten, neglected, or even killed after being placed in the hands of the wrong parent (mother or father) at the recommendation of poorly trained court custody mediators who don’t follow the law, but do follow the time constraints placed upon them by the AOC for BUDGETARY reasons.
And I am far more concerned that those of us on the front lines are finding that the “rules of engagement” utilized by the branch to deal with court critics are not found in the Code of Judicial Ethics or the Federal or State Constitutions. They are found in the Penal Code and RICO statutes. And interestingly, this is getting WORSE under Cantil-Sakauye’s reign. When court files INCREASINGLY go conveniently missing; when court critics are INCREASINGLY set up via “special” procedures, secret orders and tampering with court records; when select court “fixers” INCREASINGLY are used and can be counted upon to “take care’ of court critics and the destruction/alteration of damning records, in violation of the law; when people are arrested, and threatened with incarceration for speaking out—and the audio of the taped interviews is conveniently missing; when children are intentionally used as pawns to control court critics; and when those charged with oversight look the other way and feign ignorance, you know what?
You all can talk all day long about the pros and cons of billion dollar courthouses and computer systems—but what should be of primary importance to ALL CA courts, big and small, is that a tiny group of bought and paid for, unqualified, unethical misfits led by a former blackjack dealer/cocktail waitress turned faux-feminist are a) running (and ruining) the biggest judiciary in the Western world, b) without oversight.
Stuart Michael
June 13, 2011
I worked in rural trial court facilities for many years. Although some were constructed for use as a courthouse, many were in buildings converted for (usually inadequate) use as a court. Security was minimal or non-existent. Although I’m not a big AOC fan, let’s not loose sight of the fact that the “good, the bad and the ugly” has come from the bloated and often corrupt “evil empire” that has morphed exponentially since the Trial Court Funding, Trial Court Employees and Court Facilities Acts, and other power and financial shifts from the trial courts to the JC & the AOC.
One of the “benefits” from the AOC has been funds to improve security in rural court rhat counties had failed to provide when they were responsible for court facilities, although there often wasn’t much that could be feasibly accomplished even with lots of AOC money.
There’s no court in California that’s “in the middle of nowhere” for those who live & work there, and none that is exempt from the same kind of courthouse security issues that occur in larger courts. A shank or a bullet has the same impact in Alpine County as in LA, SF, or Sacto. Inadequate or non-existent courthouse entrance screening can result in greater problems from the public than from shackled inmates, who are often busy calculating how much time they will actually have to serve or don’t want to loose CTS or GT-WT credits by doing something even more dumb than got them incarcerated in the first place
Courtflea is correct that every court facility should have 2 courtrooms, At a minimum each should have a circulation pattern that separates incarcerated persons from the public and the staff. In many instances multi-county facilities might be a better alternative rather than replicating everything in every county and a better use of construction funds, if turf and logistical issues can be overcome.
Someone should be looking at Board of Corrections construction and usage requirements that impose 24-hour standards on holding cells only used a few hours at a time. I know of at least one court construction project whose cost rose 50% because of BOC requirements, and was delayed several years as a result, until the State Fire Marshall finally forced the county to act.
Use of buses in lieu of holding cells would also require regulatory changes.