Ideas for courthouse improvements sought at Public Safety session
Polk County Sheriff Johnny Moats wants to improve security at the Polk County Courthouses.
In order to do so, it is his hopes that officials can come together in the months ahead to find solutions on how to fix problems at the two buildings in downtown Cedartown and keep everyone safe within.
His problem in short comes down to this: as the number of court sessions grows within the county, so does the requirements of manpower that is needed at security checkpoints at the front doors of both courthouses, as well within the courtrooms themselves. The Sheriff is responsible for the security at both the Polk County Courthouses.
Add to that a growing list of documents to serve to people, prisoners to transport from around the state, and no additional funds readily available for new deputies to provide the security needed to his list as well. Which presents him with a difficult choice: have deputies out in the field serving papers or making arrests on outstanding warrants, or have them tied up at the courthouses for hours on end.
“We’ve been working in my office to figure out how to make the courthouse more secure, and actually do it with a little less manpower than what we’ve got,” Moats said during a special called County Public Safety committee meting last week. “Right now with the two courthouses not conjoined, it leaves us with two separate courthouses to protect, and it takes a lot more manpower, and we can consolidate it.”
So his hopes were that with stakeholders and court officials gathered together for the meeting, they might be able to begin coming up with solutions to outstanding security problems. One idea he hopes will come of it is consolidating courtroom time for the public and those charged into one building at a time.
No ideas are set to be acted upon anytime soon, and ranged from installing a special entrance for inmates from the jail who have court hearings, to closing off Sycamore Street behind the courthouse to traffic and enclose the back parking area behind the courthouse.
What Moats and court officials got out of the meeting was
a list of ideas and areas to investigate within the courthouse for additional space for the time being, and priorities to begin work on in the months to come.
Another growing concern for Moats was high profile cases involving murders over the past two years coming up on the trial calendar and the need to have secured spaces to move jail inmates around and avoid potential problems. Though no specifics were laid out for now, officials did agree that those court dates should be kept to
just one courthouse to better control prisoner access to and from the Polk County Jail.
Moats also hoped to avoid future problems with transport of inmates at the jail to court hearings, and then having them sit for several hours in holding cells that also need renovations of their own.
One additional area where court officials also sought help was with control of the growing number of documents under their care from filings and proceedings with the Tallapoosa
Circuit Superior Court, Polk County Probate Court, Polk County Juvenile Court and the Polk County Magistrate Court. That also coincides with needs for additional office space as well for new court officials, like the newly hired director of the Mental Health court.
With the start of a conversation, the hope Moats and court officials is to get a plan in place for how these improvements and security issues can be tackled in the months to come.
Tuesday was the final day of the Georgia General Assembly and also served as the deadline for several education bills with some passing both chambers and some having to wait until next year to be revisited.
Bills that have been passed by the house and senate include a $3,000 state-wide raise for teachers, mandatory recess for elementary students in kindergarten as well as first- through fifth-grades and required computer science classes for middle and high schools.
The $3,000 pay raise was called a down payment by Kemp, who promised a $5,000 raise across the board once he was elected. The standing governor announced the raise on Jan. 17 along with $30,000 to each school to be used for security purposes. The budget containing these two items has been passed by the house and senate and await Kemp’s signature.
Beginning in the 20192020 school year, state schools will be required to give kindergarten through fifth-grade students a daily recess providing around 30 minutes of outdoor time. Schools are not required to give students recess if they have physical education or other activities scheduled for the day according to the bill. The bill calls for local school boards to create their own policies regarding recess time for elementary school students.
The Georgia General Assembly also passed Senate Bill 108 which will now require middle and high schools to incorporate a computer science class into the curriculum. According to the bill less 0.5 percent of high school students take a computer science course. The bill says there is a growing number of computer science jobs in the state of Georgia, and the logical thinking taught in these classes has become valuable.
In other area news from the Gold Dome, there’s House Bill 602, the Rome Building Authority, and 603, which provided a pay increase for Floyd County Schools Board of Education members, both passed the House and Senate.
The building authority would give Rome City Schools the ability to sell bonds in order to finance the school’s college and career academy early. The system will pay back the bonds with ELOST V funds which the system began collecting on Monday. The bill is currently waiting to be signed by Gov. Brian Kemp and the Rome City Schools board will have to vote to use the authority to fund the college and career academy once it has been passed.
Floyd County Schools board members received a $200 monthly pay increase, which was voted by the board during a called meeting on Jan. 17. Members will now receive $600 a month for serving on the board of education and will also be reimbursed for any expenses incurred while traveling outside of Floyd County if members are conducting board of education business. The pay increase will become effective on the first day of the month after the governor signs the bill into law.
In past weeks during a recent meeting, the Polk County Board of Education announced that they planned to keep their pay the same rate. Board member J.P. Foster reported from committee that it was looked at but decided that a pay increase wasn’t needed at this time.
Standard Journal Editor Kevin Myrick contributed to this report.