El Dorado County courthouse

3/09 unedited Tahoe Mt. News

By Kathryn Reed

If it didn’t involve elected officials, staff paid by taxpayer dollars and land donated by a pioneer family, the squabble over the county courthouse on Johnson Boulevard might be comical.
Instead, South Lake Tahoe and El Dorado County employees continue to bicker about who should do what and why with the courthouse that resides on land donated by the Johnson-Springmeyer clan.
City Manager Dave Jinkens sent a letter to County Administrative Officer Gayle Erbe-Hamlin on Feb. 17 explaining that the City Council on Feb. 10 said no to the transfer and requested both sides meet. As of press time, the county had not responded.
Supervisor Norma Santiago told the Tahoe Mountain News that she believes two issues exist and that they should be handled separately. One is California requiring all county courthouses be given to the state; the second is whether the city was fairly compensated for the land on which the building sits.
The state has spent more than five years to get counties to transfer the buildings. The land is not part of the deal. Locally, that means South Lake Tahoe owns the land.
“Our courthouses are in a state of disrepair,” Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, said in a press release. “With the completion of agreements to transfer court facilities from counties to the state, state-funded improvements can finally begin. The vast majority of our courthouses need significant improvement to provide safe and secure access to justice, and to deal with overcrowding and access for the disabled.”
Santiago believes the 37-year-old agreement between the county and city involving the property in question is mute. Jinkens believes the city is still owed property in exchange for the use of the existing site. Marjorie Springmeyer still doesn’t understand why the land her family donated for a city hall has a jail on it.