EVERETT — City leaders decided Wednesday night to move forward with a plan to spend $6 million to renovate the municipal court at its current site rather than continue to investigate other alternatives.
The City Council also agreed that whatever happens conforms to the city’s own plans for downtown.
It took three hours of talking, dozens of questions and an angry tirade from a municipal court judge.
In the end, the decision came down to location and a need to move forward on a project that has been stalled for nearly 20 years.
City leaders have called the municipal court issue a “30- to 50-year” decision. The current site at 3024 Wetmore Ave. is too small.
At least two businessmen said they approached the city and offered to sell turn-key buildings for at least $1 million less than the renovation would cost.
Both men said the city’s administration wouldn’t sit down and negotiate.
Wednesday night the city staff presented an “apples-to-apples” comparison they prepared of the costs of all three buildings based on data gathered and prepared from a consultant. That comparison showed the current site as the cheapest option, but did not include the price owners said they were willing to pay.
It was a split decision, with councilmen Jeff Moore, Ron Gipson, Paul Roberts and Arlan Hatloe voting to move forward and council members Drew Nielsen, Shannon Affholter and Brenda Stonecipher opposed.
Several on the City Council were irritated they haven’t heard the full details about the plan before last night’s meeting. Nielsen resigned from a leadership role on the council April 22 because he said the city was rushing the decision.
At one point Nielsen suggested tabling the discussion for a few more weeks to gather more information, but that idea didn’t have enough votes either.
The council members who opposed the idea had a laundry list of questions they said weren’t answered by city data, including the projected costs of operations at each site.
Nielsen said he wasn’t comfortable making a decision when he had only been presented with “abracadabra operational numbers.”
Not long into the discussion, municipal court judge Timothy Odell stood up from his seat in the audience, grabbed a handful of rolled-up plans and stormed to the podium to give the council a talking-to.
“This affects me and my staff more than anybody else in this room,” he said, after dumping the plans on the podium. “After 16 years of plans we’re still sitting in that stinking little crummy building.”
He told the council how he and his colleagues had to do their work with no privacy in a trailer outside the cramped municipal building.
At one point, Council President Paul Roberts had to use his gavel to get Odell to stop interrupting a councilman who was trying to speak.
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com
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