Amelia County staff outline 2–3 year plan to relieve office and equipment space shortages

Amelia County staff presented a short-term plan during a workshop to address growing space needs across county offices and public-safety facilities, proposing a mix of in-house renovations and contracted projects over the next two to three years.

A county staff member told the workshop the plan is “a 2, 3 year plan” focused on short-term, practical fixes rather than long-range master planning. The presentation recommended converting part of the administration building basement into usable space for the Registrar’s Office, including raising the basement floor, adding a ramp and an accessible exterior entrance to take advantage of existing adjacent parking and avoid closing the Parks & Rec building on most election days.

The presenter said moving the Registrar to the basement would “provide more office space plus space for her to have either meetings or post smaller elections,” and that the work would require relatively minor structural changes. Participants raised technical constraints, including sprinkler pipe clearances (the presentation cited an eight-foot sprinkler line) and existing sewer or water lines that limit how much the outside door can be lowered. Staff estimated door-lowering plus floor work could gain roughly 8 to 14 inches of headroom in places, but said final design would determine exact clearances and finishes.

The workshop also covered reassigning staff and functions: probation staff currently working out of the EOC Building could relocate to the Bepple Building; court services and probation could move into the Registrar’s former space, freeing room downtown and allowing the Commonwealth’s attorney office to expand. One participant noted a 150-square-foot increase available under one option.

In phase B of the plan, the county proposed protecting expensive Public Works equipment by renovating an existing Ag Building (about 3,200 square feet of general covered area and roughly 1,200 square feet of office space cited) or building an addition. The presenter said smaller equipment now scattered across sites could be centralized in an enclosed, heated building rather than left outdoors.

Parks and recreation proposals included repurposing the soon-to-be-vacant old animal shelter mostly for storage and upgrading the press-box/concession structure at the softball field so both teams and game officials would have locker and restrooms on-site. Staff described the existing press-box structure as a small wood-frame building that “needed to be replaced,” and proposed adding an officials’ room below the new press box.

Public-safety infrastructure drew sustained discussion. Staff recommended adding apparatus bays at several fire stations to accommodate longer modern ambulances, naming Manborough as the first priority followed by other stations and the squad house. Participants discussed site constraints such as overhead power lines and setbacks, impacts on parking for polling locations, and whether to add living or overnight quarters at certain stations. One workshop participant cited recent emergency-management figures, saying there were about 600 EMS calls in the courthouse-area district and that call-volume should help prioritize which stations receive upgrades.

To help deliver more work in-house, staff proposed converting a current part-time position to full time effective in January. The presenter gave an estimated cost of “about 26 and a half thousand” dollars, including benefits, to cover the remainder of the fiscal year and said the budget cycle would include a public-works position request on July 1 for the next budget year.

No formal votes were taken on the facility plan at the workshop. The presenter described the session as informational and asked whether the board wanted staff to return with refined cost estimates and appropriation requests for November or December. “If there’s consensus around this general plan,” the presenter said, staff would “flush this out in the CIP process and get some more cost estimates.”

Next steps noted at the workshop: staff will produce detailed schematics, further cost estimates and funding options as part of the county’s capital-improvement (CIP) process and bring appropriation requests back to a business meeting for formal consideration. The workshop ended after a brief procedural motion to adjourn.