Published: November 09, 2009 08:10 pm      

Elevator breakdown forces changes

DANVILLE — A breakdown of the sole elevator in the courthouse annex has officials scrambling to make sure county services and meetings are available to everyone.

The annex elevator — which is almost 50 years old — broke down a week ago and recent estimations put the potential repair time at as much as seven weeks. That makes the upper county offices in the four-story building unreachable for some older or handicapped visitors.

In order to comply with facets of the Americans with Disabilities Act, County Board Chairman Jim McMahon said the first-floor Vermilion County Clerk’s Office will become the interim hub for the building, handling the requests of people unable to climb the flights of stairs.

“We’re going to be the clearinghouse for people that come in and wander around this building,” said County Clerk Lynn Foster. A worker from the fourth-floor supervisor of assessments office was already set up at a desk in her office to help people.

“We’ll have a fair amount on our plate, but we’re happy to help,” she said.

The county is seeking bids for the repair of the building. An emergency ordinance allowing up to $75,000 to be spent on the elevator goes before the county board tonight. McMahon said he expects to have a solid cost figure in the next three days.

“If the bid comes in and says you need to tear the whole thing out, we’ll look at that,” he said, noting the county has spent more than a $500,000 in the last two years on the courthouse annex. That includes around $12,000 spent on the elevator motor last year.

“We can’t stop doing business,” McMahon said. “We can’t relocate without spending thousands of dollars of taxpayer money, so we’re going to stay right her and make it happen.”

Making it happen includes dealing with the county board, committee and board of review meetings scheduled to take place on the second and third floors of the annex during the next seven weeks.

For tonight, McMahon said the county board meeting will be moved across the street to the second-floor meeting room of Old National Bank. Future smaller meetings may be moved to the Vermilion County Emergency Management Agency building along Georgetown Road.

McMahon could not completely rule out the possibility of a public meeting being conducted in the annex.

McMahon said the breakdown is a “wake up call” to start looking at the elevators both in the annex and the two elevators used in the county courthouse.

Long-term plans — which could run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — will be looked at for each of them.