Madison County courtroom renovations underway
By Randy Pierce • Justified by Madison County Circuit Clerk Patrick McRae as being necessary after years of neglect, the courtroom renovations 155 North Main Street in Edwardsville are starting with the most frequently used one where traffic citations are addressed.
At the regular monthly meeting of the county board held on June 17, a resolution approved unanimously calls for the expenditure of $41,171.54 to purchase furniture for Traffic/Misdemeanor Court Room 103 from Wiley Interiors of Springfield, Illinois while a similar piece of legislation, which also passed without objection, involves the modernization of equipment used in the same location at a cost of $118,549.52.
For the latter of those two expenses, a company called Conference Technologies Inc. of Maryland Heights, Missouri, will provide computer monitors, touchpads, control panels, speakers, microphones, screens and other items along with a five-year service contract, these costs to be covered in part by a $50,000 state circuit court grant while the rest will come from the circuit clerk’s administration budget.
All of these items are being acquired in conjunction with an Illinois program where local units of government can take advantage of lower costs provided through a bulk-type purchasing process referred to as the “state bid list.”
McRae recently met with the county board judiciary committee to explain that every courtroom needs refurbishing because very little has been done with them for many years.
Traffic court experiences for what McRae described as “your average everyday person” were “pretty subpar,” he told the judiciary committee.
“If you’ve ever been in a traffic courtroom,” this one “was something they threw together probably.”
It does not look like any other courtroom in the county, he continued, “If you’d walk in there, I think that we could have done a lot better. So, one thing I noticed right off the bat was that it’s tough for people to take you seriously when your workspace doesn’t look serious and that workspace did not look serious.”
For people whose only experience with the county court system consists of a traffic ticket, McRae said, “It didn’t give us a good image in the public and it needed to be done.”
“It was aging and beyond aging,” he shared, “and, I’m being honest, slightly embarrassing.”
Already occurring in this courtroom, McRae added, were new flooring, new drop ceiling registers and diffusers, noting, “It’s been a pretty nice project and it has the traffic courtroom already looking much better.”
Further elaborating on his take about the conditions in the county courtrooms, McRae said some which have the same types of light fixtures use different colored bulbs in them.
McRae said he plans to work with Third Judicial Circuit Court Chief Judge Christopher Threlkeld regarding a plan for some of the other most often used courtrooms needing attention of which there are many.
On a final note, the chair of the judiciary committee, Chrissy Wiley of Bethalto, made it clear both in that setting and before the full county board that she has no connection whatsoever with the Springfield furniture provider vendor despite having the same last name.
