Milwaukee County Safety Building facing heat, maintenance issues
Milwaukee County Courthouse heat and maintenance issues
Extreme temperatures are heating up the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Now – court officials are sounding the alarm on the outdated Safety Building.
MILWAUKEE - Extreme temperatures are heating up the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Now – court officials are sounding the alarm on the outdated Safety Building.
Too hot, or too cold
What we know:
On Friday, July 17, FOX6 toured the nearly 100-year-old Safety Building with Chief Judge Carl Ashley and Judge Laura Crivello.
This included hallways, a holding room, a jury deliberation room, and Judge Crivello's courtroom. Throughout the tour, temperatures clocked in the high 80s and low 90s. The lowest temperature noted was 84 degrees inside Crivello's courtroom.
Chief Judge Carl Ashley and Judge Laura Crivello
"As a society, as a community, we can do better," Judge Ashley said.
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A nearby room, with an AC unit, where jurors would come to deliberate clocked in at 86 degrees. Crivello said jurors spending hours in a small hot room, accompanied by a loud AC unit, makes for an uncomfortable setting while they are reviewing important information for trials.
Window AC unit
"It affects their ability to, I think, to engage in a conversation with other people that's courteous, that's comfortable," Crivello said. "If I were stuck in here, I might be apt to move a little bit faster than I would be moving if I didn't have a place where I was comfortable, at ease, and could hear clearly what everyone was saying."
Both Ashley and Crivello said this is the norm.
"The issues we have right now in the summer, they're extreme. In the winter, I can tell you they're equally extreme," Crivello said.
Temperature gun reading 90 degrees
Other problems
What we know:
Both judges said the issues at the Safety Building go beyond just the heat. The two mentioned maintenance issues such as broken elevators and plumbing.
"I've worked in the building on and off for 31 years," Crivello said. "While working here, I've received emails saying, 'don't use the bathrooms on the east side of the building, because they will explode if you flush them."
"We've had flooding, power outages, heat issues, temperature issues," Ashley added. "This building is not worth putting money into, and they're band-aiding it all the time."
Courtroom
These are the reasons why court leaders are pushing for a new building.
"We don't want to spend any more of the taxpayers' hard-earned money to try to retrofit, or band-aid, this complex," Ashley said.
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County leaders pitched a plan to demolish and replace the Safety Building. It is a part of the Courthouse Complex project.
Right now – that project has an $897 million price tag attached to it. Leaders are looking at ways to reduce the cost to taxpayers – and plan to discuss the issue at upcoming committee meetings.
Portions of this article were formatted using A.I. FOX6’s reporter and an editor reviewed it for accuracy and tone prior to publishing.
The Source: Information in this story was gathered from Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley and Milwaukee County Judge Laura Crivello.