Oregon Chief Justice Paul De Muniz decided it was time for the state’s courts to get up to snuff.
When he took office De Muniz, according to Lake County Assistant to the Commissioners, Bob Pardee, decided to bring all the courtroom facilities in the state to the same standards.
“He developed benchmarks to see where we would need to fix and where we didn’t,” Pardee said. “Money was provided to work on a statewide assessment on the courthouses around the states and Lake County is one of them.”
By Oregon law it is up to the county to provide a courtroom facility and in order to do so, De Muniz believes it is time to make sure that the buildings aren’t just standing, but they can do so on their own merits.
“Now its just a matter of maintaining its security, integrity, and its ability to maintain human traffic,” Pardee said.
David Byrne, of Hennebery Eddy Architects out of Portland and working as a liaison to the Department of Administrative Services for Oregon conducted an assessment on July 31 and the report card is forthcoming, hopefully by early to mid-September, Pardee said.
“We definitely need this and we’ve been working on this for a while now,” Dan Schultz of the Lake County Circuit Court and a member of the Security/Facility/Safety Committee, said. “We have a lot of imperative needs but now it’s a matter of prioritizing.”

... for the complete story, refer to this week's Lake County Examiner.