The doors to the new Duval County Courthouse will open today for employees to start moving in and training in the building, weeks after first expected.
For City Council members frustrated by a lack of information about the courthouse project, a search for answers also will begin today.
“In a sense we’re going to do a post-mortem on the project,” said City Council Vice President Bill Bishop.
The Courthouse Oversight Special Committee will meet at 4 p.m. today at City Hall for the first time since the courthouse failed to open May 29, when it was scheduled to start operating.
Bishop has a list of questions that he wants answered.
“We still all want to know just how this whole move transpired what turned out to be a number of weeks too early,” he said.
Aside from figuring out who is responsible for that call, Bishop said the bigger question is how sound the corrections are to the smoke suppression system. Failed fire-safety tests kept the courthouse from opening.
“From my discussions with the fire marshal, the fire chief and various people involved in the project, there was a lot of scrambling going on to try to make these fire systems work. I want to know what they did to make them work and do we in fact have a finished, final product or do we have something that’s somewhat cobbled together just to simply get a sign-off so that we can move in,” Bishop said.
Bishop becomes Council president next month. He said Council will audit the courthouse project, asking how the money was spent.
WOKV FM-106.5 and AM-690 is a Daily Record news partner.