HERMANN – Those much-ballyhooed new front doors on the Gasconade County Courthouse that was ordered during the COVID-19 pandemic are about to lose one of their primary reasons for installation: The hands-free opening function.

Thanks to a recent power surge that struck the courthouse — as well as homes more than a dozen miles away — county government officials are left pondering what to do regarding the doors in the event of another surge. The one that struck recently knocked out the automatic opening function. “I guess it’s propped open,” said County Clerk Lesa Lietzow during Thursday morning’s County Commission session, referring to the two doors on the courthouse’s main entrance on the south side.

Those doors replaced the aging and decaying doors on the historic structure. The new doors were ordered during the coronavirus pandemic and paid for with CARES Act funds, the first round of money allocated to local governments by Congress in response the pandemic. The no-touch opening function was hailed as a way to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Now, like the pandemic itself, the hands-free function appears destined to become an item in the courthouse’s history, thanks to that power surge.

Lietzow said the electricians consulted after the power surge recommended an old-fashioned fix to the zapped-out automatic opener: “They’d like you to consider putting on handles,” she said. Just in case it happens again.

“It’s going to happen again,” said Northern District Associate Commissioner Jim Holland, R-Hermann.

The Commission asked the county clerk to have millwright Mike LeRoy, who crafted the front doors -— and the matching east-side door that was installed in recent months — provide samples of handles for the front doors.

In other matters taken up during last week’s session, Lietzow pointed out that when she retires at year’s end, leaving the courthouse also will be her 24-year-old laptop computer. That laptop held more than two decades of history of county government.

Indeed, the county clerk said, her presumptive successor, Chief Deputy Clerk Danielle Norsic, had Lietzow download all that history. The county clerk said Norsic “gave me the task of transferring 24 years of notes onto a flashdrive to put on a server.”

Norsic is unopposed in November’s General Elections to succeed Lietzow.

“I feel relieved that they have been salvaged and saved,” Lietzow said of the volumes of notes that were kept on her laptop computer.