Rowan County Superior Court staff are doing heroic work given the number of open staff positions, according to resident Superior Court Judge Michael Adkins.

Adkins had nothing but praise for all those that work inside the court, from clerks to attorneys to magistrates to deputies and everyone in between.

“We are underfacilitied and undermanned,” said Adkins in a recent conversation about the state of the court. “But everyone here has adopted a can-do attitude, and in the last two years, we have changed things around and things are running as smoothly as they possibly can be. But everyone is working in overdrive, and you just can’t maintain that.”

The court building also houses the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office, and in recent years, the court already absorbed some of the spaces the sheriff’s office previously occupied, and while that has helped, it does not address the fact that in truth, the superior court room is the one fully functioning court room in the building, and change needs to come.

Currently the court is running with a backlog of cases, though they have been reduced significantly in the last two years, said Adkins. But the staffing, particularly in the defense attorneys arena, is frustratingly low. Raleigh has determined that Rowan needs to have a public defenders’ office, but Adkins said there is currently no place to put one.

“The superior court room is beautiful,” said Adkins. “I love it. But it’s the only courtroom we have that is truly suitable for a jury. It has ready access to the jury room and you feel the weight of the law in that courtroom.” Some of the other court rooms hold jury trials, but they are awkward in their layout and not conducive to holding the judge, all the court and legal staff necessary for a trial and the jury.

Bringing a jury into some of the courtrooms means bringing them through the public areas, in some cases through family or friends or witnesses they will then see in the courtroom.

At least one of the court rooms does not have direct access to the jail and defendants have to be brought in under security scenarios that are challenging, at best, if not dangerous.

They also have a range of challenges electronically, which concerns Adkins since all courts are eventually going to be e-courts, or electronic.

“Right now I’m ‘wet signing’ everything, which is much faster,” he said. “I can wet sign documents while I’m sitting in another trial because I already know what I’m signing, so I can listen to what is happening while I’m signing. But e-signatures will require more steps, and I will not be able to multitask that. It will mean my having to open documents, then open the signature program, and I will not be able to attend to computer steps and listen to what is going on in court. I will not be able to give the court the proper attention. So we know that’s going to slow us down.”

The county has grown quickly and by leaps and bounds in recent years, and the load the courthouse carries has increased along with the residential growth. But the space and the staffing have not kept pace, and though there are plans for the sheriff’s offices on the second floor to relocate to the Crawford building, which the county already owns, that won’t be enough in the long run.

Adkins said the District Attorney’s Office would expand to fill the second floor, and eventually the hope is to also have the first floor if the sheriff’s office completely moves out, but he isn’t sure that would correct all the issues.

Sheriff Travis Allen is on board with moving his office out of the building, saying “our work happens on the streets, so we can have our offices wherever. And we don’t need anything fancy. Just give me a metal building with office spaces and I’m good.”

The question for both issues is money.

But before the county might make a decision about spending any large amounts on new buildings for either organization, they have agreed to conduct two studies.

One will help determine what the needs of the courthouse are and how they can be met. The other is a pay study of the Sheriff’s Office, which has not been conducted since Bob Martin was sheriff. He served from 1986-98. At that time, the department was allocated four deputies to work security for the court. And while salaries for those positions have gone up, the number allocated has not.

Allen said in truth he isn’t told where he has to assign deputies, but he does say the salary issue gets in the way of retention.

“It’s not the starting salaries that are the problem,” he said. “We are fairly competitive there. It’s the salaries down the line, so what we have become is a training ground. People start with us, and then three, four years down the road, another department offers them $8,000, $10,000 more and I can’t compete with that.”

When the county issued the bidding for the compensation study for the public safety departments, responding consultants asked why they focus solely on the public safety department.

“For right now, we are focusing on public safety only because of increases that have occurred in the surrounding counties and the high rate of turnover in these positions,” was the answer given by the purchasing department in an addendum.

Both studies are officially underway after a contract with Moseley Architects was approved on Monday. The contract, which totaled $259,900, lumped a space needs study for the courthouse, sheriff’s office and main detention center together with a staffing analysis for the sheriff’s office. At its completion, the study will lay out whether expansion, renovation or new buildings are needed to fit the space constraints and will lay out projections and recommendations through 2045.

Both men say they believe the county commissioners are well aware of the problems and are trying to address them. Adkins said he has met with the county manager, engineer and attorney and they have begun discussions of what it would take to have a fully functional courthouse that will carry the county forward.

“These are problems the commissioners inherited,” said Allen, “and I truly believe they want to help. But I also know the funding we are talking about is big money, and that can be a hard sell, because people are worried about tax increases. I think, and this is just me, that maybe it would be something to put to the public in a referendum.” He added that any time his department has gone to the commissioners with an absolute need, “they have never turned us down. So I know they understand.”

“It’s never going to be less expensive to build than right now,” said Adkins. “The cost just goes up, so whatever the county can do now is going to be the most cost effective.” But he said it is essential to plan for the future whatever they decide to do.

“I call it the tale of two courthouses,” he explained. Forsyth County spent $91 million on a new, five-story courthouse that was already too small and too poorly arranged from the start, he said. But Cabarrus County spent $131 million on a new, four-story court house that, right now, has unused space but in five years will not only be in use, but will be able to handle the growth. In addition, they planned for things like movement of both defenders and juries, and for the need for office space for resident judges, visiting judges and public defenders, and meeting spaces for judges and attorneys.

“For instance, the jury assembly room has one wall with dedicated walkways to each of the courtrooms,” he said.

Millions have already been put on the table to start addressing the issue, with $4.85 million in the current fiscal year’s budget for the renovations of the Crawford Building, which began in earnest in January of 2024 when the county awarded a contract to CPL Architects and Engineers for the design services of the space. That contract, which was accompanied by a budget amendment of $270,000, laid out the county’s current plans for the space.

Five thousand square feet of the building would be renovated as part of the current project, with most of the remaining square area of the building remaining untouched. Those renovations would provide office space for the sheriff’s office’s administrative staff.

The Crawford Building is approaching its 100th anniversary, having been built in 1930, so issues have cropped up during the renovation. The county was required to seek a certificate of appropriateness from the Salisbury Historic Preservation Committee, which was approved with added requirements surrounding the exterior facade and windows. The commissioners also approved a change order on Monday adding $8,500 to the CPL contract to pay for a survey of the underground sanitary piping due to the age and unknown conditions.

The county commissioners and county managers are looking at the issue and they have agreed, as noted, that the two studies need to be done. And there are plans, at least in the short term, to try to address space concerns.

Robert Sullivan contributed to this story.