The Henry County Board of Supervisors is looking at ways to rearrange several county offices, but officials stress that nothing has been decided and there are still several questions that need to be answered.
The supervisors held a space allocation work session Tuesday at the Henry County Courthouse.
The discussion began for two primary reasons.
First, the county’s computer servers need to be housed in a secure room that can be equipped with fire suppression to meet insurance standards and comply with the auditor’s requirements for files to be inaccessible to other employees or the general public. The servers are currently in the same room as the county’s two IT employees and the Henry County Auditor’s election files.
Because of those requirements, the IT employees cannot continue working in the same room as the servers and require office space.
Moving the servers to another area of the courthouse would be a major and potentially expensive project, requiring new wiring and work through the courthouse’s concrete walls.
The second reason for looking at the courthouse’s available space was the need for a larger room for supervisors’ meetings. That issue has been somewhat resolved now that the board is holding its meetings at the Henry County Emergency Management building.
But moving one office creates a chain reaction, with several departments potentially needing to move to make the space work.
Supervisor Marc Lindeen said the county needs to have a comprehensive plan before moving anyone, saying, quote, “We need a plan so everyone knows what the end results will be before we start moving things around at all.”
Supervisor Chad White presented some ideas he has mapped out for potentially rearranging county offices.
One possibility would move the Veterans Affairs office to the Emergency Management Building where there is currently an office rented by the Iowa Department of Transportation. Supervisor White said the Iowa DOT has indicated it would move if given adequate notice.
The Veterans Affairs space in the old sheriff’s office building on Clay Street could then potentially be used for Juvenile Court and the County Attorney’s office. That building is located just south of and across from the courthouse.
Under the proposal, the County Attorney’s current space on the first floor of the courthouse could then potentially be used for employee space, including a break room and additional office space for IT.
However, supervisors acknowledged there are still several missing pieces before any of those moves could take place.
One of the biggest questions is the cost of creating a fire-suppression room for the county’s servers.
Another possibility is keeping the servers where they are and finding a way to divide the existing room so the IT employees can be separated from the equipment, while also providing the Auditor’s Office with a secure, locked space for required files.
The Auditor’s Office needs frequent, sometimes daily, access to those files, so simply moving them to an off-site or inconvenient storage area would not be practical.
Supervisors also discussed the courthouse’s existing vaults, which provide a significant amount of dry storage. However, the vaults are not climate controlled, meaning they would not be appropriate for IT equipment or office space and may not work for some of the Auditor’s election equipment.
The board emphasized that there are numerous possibilities but no final plan. Supervisors still need additional information on costs, the logistics of each move, what construction or wiring would be required, and how moving one department would affect the others.
The office space issue will be recapped during the Henry County Board of Supervisors meeting Thursday, September 3rd, at 9 a.m. at the Henry County Emergency Management Building.
The meeting is open to the public.