Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 8, 1991 TAG: 9102080608
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
"The acoustics are not too good out there; I guess I hear more than I should," he said.
Fire gutted Pulaski County's historic courthouse on Dec. 29, 1989, and sent county officials looking for new quarters.
Three weeks later, general district and juvenile and domestic relations courts were convening in the county administration building. Offices for the commissioner of revenue and voting registrar were shifted to the Dalton Building.
Adult probation offices moved to a little house next to the courthouse addition on 3rd Street. The house once contained law offices for a former county commonwealth's attorney, A. Dow Owens, who is now a circuit judge here.
The fire spared the newer courthouse addition, so the circuit court facilities, clerk's and treasurer's offices remain where they were.
The Board of Supervisors planned to finance a restored and improved facility with a $4 million bond issue. But that failed by one vote - 3,670 to 3,669 - in a referendum on Nov. 6. So the temporary facilities, spelled out on a white sign on a fence surrounding the remains of the old courthouse, will stay in use awhile longer.
Even before the fire, the courthouse facilities left much to be desired. In fact, Cooley finds the temporary accommodations an improvement over the earlier general district court facilities.
"It's better than the old," he said. "The biggest problem I have with it, we have no conference rooms and we have no security."
His own office is a long, narrow space where he sometimes has to share a desk with the Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program people.
The meeting-room-turned-courtroom was an auditorium before the administration building was converted from a school building. A woman waiting for court to convene there recently recalled attending assembly programs in the chamber.
The clerk is set up in what amounts to a walk-in closet along one wall of the room. Signs stating that no food or drinks are allowed in the courtroom are taped up during court days, and then removed.
Witnesses testify from an ingenious witness stand on wheels, all wired up with a microphone. The building custodian wheels it in on court days, then wheels it out again for storage.
But with Cooley, Judge James Joines and Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge William F. Thomas Jr. all using the facilities at various times, there are a lot of court days - as many as four a week.
For about a month, Cooley has been experimenting with having all the arraignments on Mondays so witnesses in specific cases need not come in until their case is scheduled.
"That's the object of it. We'll try it a little, but if it doesn't work, we'll try something else," he said.
Conflicts with Board of Supervisors meetings have been minimal, he said.
Twice, the supervisors tried to pre-empt his court, but his docket was too big to let that happen, he said. Another time they were successful, but it was a day that Cooley didn't have such a long docket. So, in his easygoing manner, he waited.
by CNB