Dubuque County supervisors consider plans for new road shop, office building

Several officials in Dubuque County are beginning to review building ideas to create a new space for Dubuque County offices, in addition to a new road shop to create space to repair and store maintenance vehicles.

According to county officials, the county's road shop was built in 1976. The county office building is an old school building, built in 1984.

To those people who work inside those facilities, getting new ones would make a large difference.

The first draft of the plans were reviewed on Monday, November 13 and county officials say they're still in the beginning phases. But this is not a topic Dubuque County supervisors plan to delay.

Between the lack of office space currently and the conditions of the facilities on City View Drive, it's a plan the county supervisors are hoping to fast-track as early as next year.

"We had to do some emergency repairs on our shop area a couple years ago because the engineers were afraid the roof was going to fall in on our people, which is not a good situation," Dubuque County Supervisor Daryl Klein said. "So I think we're trying to get something together so that maybe we can start moving forward with construction sometime in the next construction year."

Between the new office building and the new road shop, the total could be around $17 million, but that figure can be misleading.

There are two things to consider with the estimate: what is it for exactly and where is that money coming from?

The money would be to replace currently unsuitable buildings as old as 50 years. County employees said there have been instances in the road shop that conditions were so poor, it was almost shut down.

They said shutting it down would have created "chaos" and they would have been forced to move to a temporary building, and "who knows how much that would have cost."

One of the first questions from county supervisors on Monday was whether or not there was grant money available for this project; the answer was "probably not."

At this point, it will more than likely be paid through taxpayer money and through bond issues, that are also funded by taxpayers.

Supervisors say a $17 million estimate for the project is most certainly not set in stone.

"There's going to be a lot of tweaking that goes on, a lot of soul-searching. Because we have to find that fine line between what is the best configuration compared to the cost," Klein said.

"Where do we get the most benefit for the dollar?"

Most of the cost from this project would go towards the new maintenance vehicle garages and road shop, currently estimated over $14 million.

People in the department say it's a necessary project.

They said with the current conditions, millions of dollars of maintenance and road equipment, some not even a year old, are currently parked outside uncovered.