Logan County Board Building & Grounds
Committee hears updates on courthouse and Latham Park Bandstand, discuss music and Christmas nativity

 

[October 02, 2024] 

On Tuesday, October 1st, the Logan County Board Building and Ground Committee kicked off the new month with their monthly meeting. The meeting was held at the Blue Room in the basement of the Logan County Safety Complex at 911 Pekin St. in Lincoln. The meeting covered several small topics, but did cover a couple of larger topics, those being an update on the Logan County Courthouse restoration and a report on some vandalism that occurred over the weekend at Latham Park.

The meeting began with attendance, of which there were four members of the six total present, just making a quorum (the minimum number of people that must be present for official business to occur). Present were chairman Jim Wessbecher, vice chairman Hannah Fitzpatrick, Michael DeRoss, and Robert Sanders. Absent were Emily Davenport and Kathy Schmidt.

Once attendance was taken, the board reviewed their old business from last month. The first of this old business was the playing of music on the outside speakers of the courthouse. This was a “no go right now,” according to Wessbecher. It was also mentioned that a group was looking to put together a choir and sing streetside in Mt. Pulaski for three weekends. This would be between the hours of noon and 3:00 pm. Wessbecher also addressed the live nativity scene that was proposed by Kathie Williams at September’s meeting. At this meeting, Williams proposed the idea of potentially having live animals, which Wessbecher clarified there can be “no animals involved.” Wessbecher further elaborated on the event, stating that the idea they came up with was to use the story walk at Latham Park. He stated that they could put a book about the birth of Jesus in the story walk and have a person at each station to guide them through.

After this came the new business, which started with Bill Walter, who was present via a phone call, giving an update on the courthouse restoration. Walter stated they now have trim pieces in for the third-floor courtroom. He also shared that they have been “significantly behind schedule.” According to Walter, they expect to be done with the third-floor courtroom the week of October 14th. After this, they are planning on moving down to the second floor, but likely will not begin for two to three weeks after the third floor is done.

As for the windows, Walter stated the company that is manufacturing the windows should have them sent around the third week in October. They will also be meeting with CAD Construction to make a schedule of when they will come in to install the new windows.

Walter also shared that the plan is to replace the windows floor-by-floor rather than in a vertical fashion. “What that means,” Walter stated, “is that we’ll be able to go into [an office] and do all of the windows at one time, as opposed to vertically, which might mean that we will interrupt that office three to four times.” Walter also shared that they plan on scheduling times with each office for their windows to be replaced well before they will actually go in and do the work.

Walter continued his update by stating that a cleanup of the courthouse roof has taken place and that they are currently fixing leaks in the roof. He stated that the leaks should be fixed by October 2nd.

Wessbecher asked Walter about the inner dome. Walter stated a company is ready to come in and begin installing stained glass panels. He stated that over the next few weeks, they are going to begin moving the panels into the courthouse, and then they are going to schedule a time for them to come and install them.

Wessbecher continued after the update with more new business. During the Homecoming parade, a chimney vent cap fell off the roof of the courthouse. No one was hurt, but it did land in the courthouse yard. A group consisting of Wessbecher, Fitzpatrick, DeRoss, Sheriff Landers, Walter, and Judge Wright met on Monday morning to discuss this issue. The idea they came up with was that Chris is to do a daily inspection of the roof to “make sure there’s nothing up there that could be a hazard.”

Wessbecher continued with more new business. Monday morning, the board received an email from the roofers that are working on the Latham Park band stand. Over the weekend, someone went in and destroyed around one hundred pieces of tile and one of the bullnose end caps. A police report and insurance claim were shortly filed. Wessbecher was unsure when or even if they would be able to find replacement tiles to match the ones that were destroyed. After some searching, a company out of Frankfurt was found that could come and clean up the mess and replace the bullnose cap. The total cost for this will be $3,798. It was shared that the perpetrators of the vandalism were three local juveniles. At the time of the meeting, two of them had been identified.

The final piece of business that was discussed was a use of grounds request for Lincoln’s annual Winter Wonderland Christmas Trees around the square. The board immediately jumped into a vote to approve the request. The quest was unanimously approved, meaning it will now go before the full board at their meeting on October 15th for final approval.

[Matt Boutcher]