HERMANN — The Gasconade County Commission is moving toward creating a 501(c)3 organization to accept donations that would be used to upgrade a set of buildings on the grounds of the county’s historic courthouse.

Earlier this month, the Commission agreed to move forward with the process of setting up such an organization after hearing from Lois Kruse, who spoke about the benefits of using a 501(c)3 organization to raise funds for the expansion of the county’s Archives & Records Center at Schiller and 4th streets in Hermann. Kruse has long been involved in the Center and regularly appeared before the Commission during its annual budget process.

At issue is the best way to deal with improvements to three buildings on the courthouse grounds — a small red brick building near the intersection of highways 100 and 19 and two frame structured in the corner near the Schiller Street-Highway 100 intersection.

One of those buildings — the Doerr building — that’s been used by county government for storage for years recently was damaged by a tree being taken down as part of a grounds-clearing effort connected to an expansion of parking space for the courthouse.

Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte, R-Hermann, posed the prospect of using a charitable organization to raise funds for improvement and avoid using taxpayer money. There has been some discussion in recent years, which was mentioned again recently by Schulte, of renovating the Doerr building to provide space for either the Public Administrator’s Office, now located in rental space, or the county’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), which has been located in the courthouse basement.

Moving the EOC would make available some additional office space in the crowded courthouse; moving the Public Administrator’s Office into a renovated Doerr building would allow the county to save money now used to pay rent for the office.

But, as noted in the minutes of the Oct. 9 Commission session, Northern District Associate Commissioner Jim Holland, R-Hermann, suggested the parking expansion project could be aided by the demolition of the Doerr building and the adjacent Barks building — a former bakery that has been deemed uninhabitable. Access from that part of the property to the courthouse, which sits significantly higher, could be gained via a sidewalk. He questioned the wisdom — from a business point of view — of investing funds in making improvements in the buildings that were donated to the county many years ago.

From his standpoint, Schulte questioned why the County Commission didn’t act sooner to improve the buildings.

Southern District Associate Commissioner Ron Hardecke, R-Owensville, after hearing the discussion about repair-or-removal, agreed to move forward with the process of setting up a 501(c)3 organization in order to gauge the level of interest before deciding the course to take regarding the buildings.

In other matters, the County Commission’s good-standing policy regarding vendors and county government employees will not be as stringent as first proposed.

Initially raised several weeks ago by the presiding commissioner, the policy regards the timely payment of county property taxes by companies looking to do business with county government and the county government employees — both those who live in Gasconade County and those who live in other counties. Schulte noted that while being delinquent on county taxes is not a big issue for vendors and employees, the county needed to formally address the matter. The notion set out by Schulte is that vendors would not be eligible to bid on county projects or county purchases if they were not current on paying their county property taxes. County employees who did not have their property taxes paid by the Dec. 31 deadline would be fired.

However, County Clerk Lesa Lietzow and Sheriff Scott Eiler voiced concern about having the Commission fire employees that they, as officeholders, had hired. The result of the discussion was a four-month extension to the deadline, giving employees four months after the Dec. 31 deadline to pay property taxes before being pink-slipped.

Being in good standing regarding taxes — both for employees and for companies looking to do business with county government — is a legitimate condition that can be imposed by the Commission, according to the county legal counsel Ivan Schraeder.