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(Mostly) order in the court
By Becky CampbellPress Staff Writer
bcampbell@johnsoncitypress.comThere wasn’t much fanfare Monday morning when the doors opened at the George P. Jaynes Washington County Justice Center.
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Email ArticleAnd except for a few judges conducting court – Judge Robert Lincoln in general sessions, Judge James Nidiffer in juvenile and Judge Thomas Seeley in chancery – and some chatter outside the courtrooms, the building was pretty quiet.
No phones ringing, no fax machines operating, no contact with anyone outside the building.
“Right now we don’t have phone service,” said Karen Guinn, circuit court clerk.
But it wasn’t just her office. The District Attorney General’s Office, the juvenile office, all the judges and Clerk and Master Brenda Sneyd were also without phone service.
Court personnel used their cell phones – the ones that had service inside the building – to conduct some business.
Sneyd said the inoperable phone lines also affected the DSL service that connected the offices to the Internet and all the operations for her office.
Sneyd said aside from the phone and Internet issues, her employees still have some unpacking to do.
“It’s going to take us probably several weeks,” she said. “It’s going as well as can be expected under the circumstances, I think.”
Sneyd said she’s happy to have both her offices from the Downtown Centre and the Jonesborough courthouse consolidated into one location.
“It’ll be cheaper, I don’t have to travel, I don’t have to duplicate equipment” or other material, she said.
It’s also a plus for Guinn’s office. She, like Sneyd, regularly traveled between Johnson City and Jonesborough to conduct business for their two offices.
Storage for the old archives is a problem for both offices, however, and the clerks must locate a proper environment for some delicate documents.
Kevin Berry, construction supervisor for Burwill Construction Co. that built the center, was at the justice center Monday to ensure there were no problems.
“We usually stay around the first few days just to make sure everything’s working smooth,” he said.
He said there had been a few questions from judges and employees about where to locate switches and things like that, but for the most part everything was going well.
Outside Lincoln’s general sessions courtroom was a much different sight than when he conducted court in Johnson City or in the small courtroom in downtown Jonesborough.
Those locations provided very few seats inside the courtroom for spectators, and the hallways were always packed with little room to walk.
On Monday, Lincoln’s courtroom was packed to capacity, but with a lot more seats available for defendants and spectators.
There was some overflow of the crowd into the lobby, but that dissipated quickly as cases moved off the docket.
The court schedules will continue today, even as the unpacking continues.