By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Last week, Ellis County commissioners agreed to begin lease negotiations with the Hadley Center for temporary office space of courthouse and Law Enforcement Center employees while the building is remodeled.

Since then, they’ve been told Thomas More Prep-Marian High School, which will be using the Hadley Center third floor as its girls residency program dorm, has some objections.

“TMP officials, the Salina Diocese and some members of the public are concerned about the ‘character’ of people who will be in and out of the temporary courtrooms in that building,” County Administrator Greg Sund told commissioners during a special meeting Wednesday night.

Dave Van Doren, co-owner of the Hadley Center, said he will write a “questionable character” clause into the county’s lease barring people deemed as dangerous from the building.

Ellis County Sheriff and Hays Police Chief Don Scheibler told commissioners they “cannot guarantee who will come into the building.”

Tuesday morning, county officials toured the vacant NEW Corp. building on south Commerce Parkway, and the former Sears building, 2508 Vine.

According to Sund, the NEW Corp. building is “bigger than needed” and the Sears building “needs lots of cleanup.”

Van Doren offered the county the option of renting space for only administrative offices at half the cost of an earlier proposal and suggested “suspect booking, interrogation and the courtrooms be temporarily housed in the county’s future administrative building at 718 Main,” which is just west of the Hadley Center.

“TMP is OK with it,” Van Doren said.

Commission Chairwoman Barb Wasinger told Van Doren the county would have to hear directly from TMP and its representatives.

Kathy Taylor, TMP principal, said the “Salina diocese attorney will want to know exactly which county offices are going into the Hadley Center, what services will be offered and who will be be working in those offices and which members of the public would be likely to come into the offices.”

The commissioners and Sund agreed “we’re going to have public objections no matter where we place the jail pods (to temporarily house Ellis County inmates.)”

“One phone call I got today,” said commissioner Dean Haselhorst, “the guy objected to having a jail in the Sears building.”

“He said there are a lot of businesses in that area. I asked him if he realized the current jail is  at 13th and Main Street in downtown Hays. He still didn’t like it,” Haselhorst said.

Commissioners voted unanimously to begin lease negotiations for the NEW and Sears buildings.