Officials took the extraordinary step of taking on new debt to replace the old courthouse, which has been plagued by rats and other pests, elevator breakdowns and flooding.
The Ector County Courthouse in Odessa on Nov. 7. Officials plan to build a new courthouse that doesn't have leaking pipes and rats.— a weekly dispatch about the people, places and policies defining Texas, produced by Texas Tribune journalists living in communities across the state. ODESSA — Employees at the Ector County Courthouse follow one rule particularly seriously: Keep food in a sealed container.
Opponents of the decision said county officials have circumvented the will of voters. Ector County Judge Dustin Fawcett, the county’s chief executive, said the anti-tax mindset has prevented the county from making long-term investments. The county’s $105 million budget can only provide bandaids to the growing infrastructure challenges the courthouse faces.
The money will enable the county to purchase the land it has selected to build a new courthouse and build it. Plans for the design have not been publicly released. County officials plan to release them in about three months. The courthouse has closed twice because of flooding. When the building floods, the employees must find shelter for hundreds of boxes containing court transcriptions and county business. Some leaks were so widespread that the employees have started to use small portable dumpsters to catch every droplet. Once, a squirrel fell through the roof, the county clerk said.
Employees repurposed a courtroom to conduct meetings and training for new staff members after they outgrew the conference room, which is now a lunch room. Across the building, employees find vacant spaces to place filing cabinets that don’t fit anywhere else. “You can't rely on every single resident to be intimately familiar with how public finance works, so that trust matters,” Bray said.
Politics Taxes Odessa Ector County West Texas Property Taxes Permian Basin Texas Legislature
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