Courthouse Floods, Loses Power and More

The postcard view above is an aerial view showing both the Broward County Courthouse and the New River Canal. (Oh, but it is about a hundred years old.)

Todd Wright of the Herald says it best, tongue in cheek, in today's paper. Let's just go with his words.

"First, there were floods. Then came darkness.
Some are wondering if Broward County Courthouse officials should start preparing for an influx of locusts. Power outages plagued the courthouse Friday, delaying hearings and leaving some courtrooms and officials without lights for much of the morning. The outages came the day after a flood forced a judge from his chambers and delayed dozens of child-support hearings. It was the third flood in three months.
Friday's power outage was blamed on a severed electrical wire.
Parts of the seventh, eighth and ninth floors in the east wing -- the oldest part of the building -were without lights or electricity until about noon.Scores of people, including inmates, waited outside courtrooms as officials tried to figure out if court would be held.
Some judges were reassigned to other courtrooms, but ran into another problem. The outage affected the court administration office, which houses the computer system used for electronic court reporting throughout the courthouse."

This is not a joke. It is just the Twilight Zone here in Broward.

This is really happening almost weekly in one of Florida's largest communities.

This is really happening in the state where we launch rockets into space, the city where we send the world's largest cruise ships off to sail the Earth's vast oceans.

How is that committee 'to look at what the hell we should do' doing anyway?

I know the bond issue to build the new courthouse was voted down, but if it was a necessity to build it anyway, and the county commissioners knew then what we are seeing now, are they not directly responsible and personally accountable for malfeasance in doing so little for so long? I think so. Whose job was it? Theirs!

With the stimulus package in place, can someone see if there is a courthouse construction project stuck in there somewhere? If not, then let's just move the county commissioner's offices into the old wing of the courthouse for a month, and no special parking either. Make them wait on the same lines to get in that the public does.