We Need A New Courthouse

Alu: We Need A New Courthouse

BY SHEILA D. ALU

Broward County is in dire need of a new Courthouse.

The media who have written negatively about this issue has gotten it completely wrong.

I work in the courthouse from morning to night, five to six, sometimes seven days-a-week.

I can tell you that the courthouse is ridden with vermin*, mold, and plagued with elevators which are over a half century old. When an elevator part breaks, which occurs on a daily basis, more often than not the parts have to be custom made because the elevators are so old that the parts are not manufactured any longer. This can shut an elevator down for several months.

The present Broward County Circuit Courthouse is a building that was never intended to last fifty years. The experts who have looked at it have said that it will never withstand another hurricane. The Courthouse is regularly plagued with plumbing leaks, roof leaks, caved in ceilings and other problems of every kind imaginable. It should have been replaced twenty-five years ago.

Shame on all of the columnists who have attacked the County Commission for authorizing the financing and construction of a new courthouse.

The Commissioners who voted to fund the new courthouse showed real leadership. This is a representative democracy. Construction contracts have never been submitted to a voters’ referendum.

Did the public ever vote on financing or building the Sunrise arena, financing or building a new runway at the airport, a new Supervisor of Elections building, or any other of the countless public works projects, which the County has undertaken?

The only reason that the bond issue went to a referendum previously was because the County was seeking to have the courthouse built with public funds, which would be outside the 10-mil cap. In order to finance the courthouse in that way, state law required that the County go to a referendum. When the public was not willing to finance the courthouse in that fashion, the County decided to seek another funding mechanism.

This time, the debt will be inside the millage cap. Regardless of what the voters may think, the undeniable fact is that we do need a new courthouse…and we need it badly.

We do not need it for aesthetics. We need it because the present building is unsafe.

People who work there regularly, and this includes judges and public defenders, as well as prosecutors, and their staff, frequently get sick from the mold. Indeed, the County is presently being sued due to damage inflicted on people by the ever-present courthouse mold.

This tired, dangerous, and obsolete building presents countless other perils, not the least of which is that we have prisoners, many unshackled, walking through the building, mixed in with general population, including victims, judges and attorneys. It is only a matter of time before there is an incident.

A new Broward Circuit Courthouse is long overdue.

I commend the County Commission for its willingness to do the right thing in the face of unwarranted criticism from the press.

The County Commission is supposed to think for itself and act accordingly, and not blindly follow what the press or what the current mood of the people may dictate. The Commission is supposed to do what it thinks will be best for the public and for the future of our County.

That is, after all, what leadership is about?

Sheila D. Alu

Sheila is the assistant deputy mayor of Sunrise and an assistant state attorney (prosecutor) who works in the downtown Fort Lauderdale courthouse.

Posted at BrowardBeat.com

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