Santa Barbara County shuffles office space

By COLBY FRAZIER — July 30, 2010

Multiple Santa Barbara County departments are in the process of playing a complicated game of musical chairs, shuffling from office to office to make room for construction projects and, in some cases, terminating costly lease agreements and extending others.

Over the next few weeks, five departments, including the public defender’s office, an arm of planning and development and the elections office, will make moves.

Much of the shuffling was sparked by a $5.5 million remodel at the public defender’s office, which is located on the top floor of the county courthouse.

But in an era of vast budget cuts and steep deficits, the moves shed light on the hundreds of thousands of dollars the county has spent over the years to lease prime space near its Anapamu Street headquarters.

When the public defender’s office moves to its temporary location at 1 E. Anapamu Street, the county will shell out $21,000 a month for the 7,120-square-foot space. The lease agreement will expire in June 2012.

According to county documents, the county has leased this location since 2003. It currently houses the county’s First Five Commission and the department of risk management.

In order to make room for the public defender’s office, risk management will move into the second floor of the Naomi Schwartz Building on Victoria Street, while First Five will relocate to additional leased space at Santa Barbara and Victoria streets.

The county’s elections office, which has long occupied the Naomi Schwartz Building, but also leased space at the corner of Anacapa and Figueroa streets and stored equipment in a corner of the courthouse basement, has moved all of its operations to a vacant county-owned building at the county’s Calle Real campus.

In doing so, Registrar of Voters Joe Holland said his department will save around $200,000 a year that was spent on renting roughly 6,000 square feet in the former Chicago Title building, located on the northwest corner of Anacapa and Figueroa streets.

“The focus has been on where it’s possible to move out of rented space into county-owned facilities so that we’re not paying rent,” Holland said yesterday in a telephone interview. He added later, “We’re able to save taxpayers money by no longer having to pay rent on that space that wasn’t county owned.”

The leased space housed Holland’s vote-by-mail unit. It required cameras and special water sprinklers, along with other security, to function properly. In odd years, when there wasn’t an election, Holland said he would vacate the space to save money. But this required a significant amount of shuffling about.

When an election was on the agenda and the space was once again needed, Holland said he would attempt to rent the same floor in the Chicago Title building. But occasionally, he said the space was already occupied, forcing him to rent and make the appropriate retrofits to store and count ballots someplace else.

“Now we’re settled in,” Holland said of his new digs, which was once occupied by the Veteran’s Administration. “We’re not going to be moving around, moving fire suppression systems, desks, cameras and computers.”

The county’s Civil Grand Jury, which was housed in space that will be affected by the public defender’s office remodel, has also been forced to find a home.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors signed off on a two-year lease for a $1,350-square-foot office at 411 E. Canon Perdido Street. (Full disclosure: the Daily Sound’s offices are located in the same building).

Construction crews have been seen building a new wall in the space and preparing it for the move. The space costs $2,700 a month. A staff report prepared for the board meeting showed the total cost of renting the space at $71,000, roughly $65,000 for rent. Officials said the remaining $6,000 is for moving expenses and improvements to the space.

Also on Tuesday, the board terminated a lease agreement for a 4,000-square-foot office on Figueroa Street it had rented for the past decade to house part of the county’s planning and development department.

This space cost $15,000 a month, the staff report shows.

“Over the years the department used the office space for various operations and programs,” the report notes. “The office space was acquired during a time of governmental expansion, when county building square footage was unavailable.”

The lease was set to expire at the end of September, meaning the county’s decision to terminate the agreement early saved taxpayers $30,000.

Paddy Langlands, the county’s assistant director of general services, said overall, when the public defender’s office project is completed, the county will have reduced the amount of space it leases.

“It’s a confluence of events that are making things very fortuitous to us,” he said.

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space : 7/30/2010

This is crazy!
Move county offices to the north county. This will reduce office space cost, it will allow the county to hire less expensive labor. have very affordable housing and it will greatly reduce traffic in downtown SB. A win, win, win, win.

taxpayer

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