NEW ALBANY — Now that the Floyd County Commissioners have moved out of the City-County Building, the race is on to see who will get to use the empty space created by their departure.

Not only is their meeting room empty, but so are two offices, all located on the second floor.

Last week, Floyd County Superior Court No. 1 Judge Susan Orth asked the commissioners to consider moving Magistrate Daniel Burke’s courtroom to the commissioners old meeting room. She said with the way it is set up, it already looks like a courtroom and is desperately needed. Burke currently holds court in the Superior Court hearing room, which was built in 1998.

“It’s a tiny space. It has no air conditioning in the summer and no heat in the winter,” Orth said. “The plan is to reinstate that as a hearing room.”

Orth, who praised Burke, compared his office space to a broom closet and said the commissioners old work space “would work perfectly” for his office.

Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson has also expressed an interest in the space according to Orth.

It is not known when a decision will be made on who will get the space or what it will be used for, said Floyd County Commissioners’ President Steve Bush. He said since the county leases offices from the Building Authority, it would be up to the commissioners to assign space.

“There have been no commitments made yet; I think it’s still an open issue,” Bush said.

However, Commissioner Chuck Freiberger said the idea of the old meeting room being used as a courtroom “has been talked about” before.

“That was my first opinion from the get go,” Freiberger said. “That is the way I have been leaning all along.”

Orth was not alone in her request to use the space for the magistrate’s courtroom and office. Floyd County Circuit Court Judge Terry Cody and Superior Court III Judge Maria Granger were also in attendance to support the idea.

“We all understand there is a lot of competition for the space,” Cody said.

“The work he and his staff do, under those conditions, is just amazing,” Floyd County Clerk Linda Moeller said of Burke.



Auditor says problem has been fixed

Georgetown Township Trustee Dennis Roudenbush told the commissioners Tuesday night that he is still waiting for the spring tax disbursement for the auditor’s office.

Georgetown Township is owed $32,222.99. Floyd County Auditor Darin Coddington said the mistake, which he blamed on computer software and an office error, has been rectified and Georgetown Township will receive its money any day.

That day was Friday, Roudenbush confirmed.

“I don’t think Mr. Roudenbush understood the process of this office,” Coddington said. “We have to work with the state [Department Local Government Finance] to make sure everything is right for the taxpayers. It’s not like we put this on the back burner. Once we identified the mistake, we went to work to correct it.

“The numbers were not put into the program incorrectly. If it had been a big deal I would have told the commissioners, but it was not a big deal.”

As the Georgetown Trustee, Roudenbush uses the money to help those in need and take care of four cemeteries.

“It’s taken well over a month to get this taken care of. The mistake should not have been made because he should have caught it,” Roudenbush said. “If it was his money, it wouldn’t have taken this long.”

Some entities received more money than they were entitled to and have to pay it back to the county in order to correct the problem. The New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp., for example, received $1.6 million extra in disbursement.

“This does not affect the taxpayers,” Coddington said. “It wasn’t an overpayment to everyone.”

Disbursements are made twice a year, in the spring and fall.

“He [Roudenbush] has been in my office one time and he was told what happened,” Coddington said. “It is being corrected. We could have waited in December to correct it but that would not have been right.”

Roudenbush, a Democratic candidate for the Floyd County Commissioners District 3 seat,  said he called numerous times to the auditor’s office but “every week I get an excuse.”

 “I would like for you to investigate it to see what happened,” Roudenbush told the commissioners Tuesday.

Roudenbush said due to a surplus, he did not need a tax disbursement last year.