OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The Winnebago County Courthouse is on the city of Oshkosh’s historic building records, and according to the county, the building is showing its age.
“County boards of past, we’ve tried to reuse a lot of older buildings, and it’s now catching up to us,” said John Hinz, Chair of the Winnebago County Facilities and Property Management Committee. “Maintenance costs are getting really crazy, I believe it’s like, somewhere around $60 million in the next five years in maintenance alone.”
Those costs extending to multiple buildings across Oshkosh and Neenah, like the administration building in an old Oshkosh B’Gosh factory.
“Unfortunately when they built it, they built it with entirely wood beams on the floors and everything. We actually had a beam, or floor, that partially dropped 3 inches. That’s in our administration building,” Hinz explained.
The county’s new master plan proposal aims to address aging buildings.
The county also wants to keep taxes low while the Oshkosh school district is asking for more money.
“I believe they just had another $250 million referendum that passed,” Hinz said. “Well, imagine what the city and the county could do if they had a third of that.”
Proposals to build new facilities, or build additions to the already existing county buildings, would cost upward of $340 million according to the master plan, while renovations would cost around $180 million.
Hinz says there’s a give and take with each option.
We have to look forward, and we have to look to what we expect the county to look like I the next 25 to 50 years. And are we setting future county boards up by handcuffing them with older buildings that they’re going to have maintenance costs that shoot through the roof on?
Hinz emphasized the plan is still in it’s early phases, and is set to take shape years down the line.
