STEUBENVILLE — An upgrade to the Municipal Court clerk’s office has been added to the scope of the old city building renovations project.

Municipal Judge John Mascio said Monday he’d released another $61,000 from the court’s special projects fund to cover the cost of the additional work, saying it makes sense to do it while crews are already on site working in other parts of the building.

Mascio said the special projects account “is funded in large part by a portion of court costs collected from criminal offenders.” He also noted an agreement with the Ohio Attorney General’s office to intercept the state tax refunds of offenders with unpaid fines and costs–where offenders fail to adhere to a court payment plan or work off unpaid fines and costs through community service–netted about $50,000 for them last year, a portion of which also went into the court’s special project fund.

“The court had originally agreed to release $30,000 for this purpose but was able to increase the amount due to a surplus in the account,” he said. “This is a significant savings to the taxpayer as part of the expense involved in the rehabilitation of court facilities has been passed on to the criminal defendants. It is my belief that, whenever possible, the costs of running the court should be placed upon the criminal offenders themselves and not the taxpayers.”

Fort Steuben Maintenance won the $1.94 million contract, which originally covered his community services office and more space and renovations to the probation office, plus the main hallway and both bathrooms, along with updates to the police department’s men’s locker room, a new women’s locker rooms, updated workout facilities and the evidence room.

The additional work will include an “extensive remodeling” of the clerk’s office.

“It made no sense to completely upgrade the building to the exclusion of that office,” Mascio said. “The court will also benefit by additional storage space since some of the police offices have been relocated to City Hall.”

City Manager Jim Mavromatis said the work is progressing on schedule, despite encountering “unknowns … (like) three different roofs” on the building.

He said they’ll be closing the old city building for three days — April 2, 3 and 4 — so crews can “do the hallway and other stuff.”

“Now’s the time to do it, while the contractor is here,” he said. “(Something like this) is never going to be done in our lifetime again and it should be done.”

“We look forward to the completion of the renovations to the Municipal Court facilities and believe that it will have a positive effect on employee morale, overall court operations and will help to better serve the public,” Mascio said, pointing out the last City Council had opted to upgrade the current complex vs, constructing a new building and to pay for its share of the project cost with some of its ARPA funding they’d set aside in the general fund.

“I was very happy with (that) decision, as this is a historical building and, in my opinion, has a lot of character,” he said. “In the early 1900s it served as an open-air market–I actually have a photograph (of it) in my office.”