Above image: The former offices of Health Resources of Arkansas on Myers Street. County officials have had plans to use the location as the relocated homes for the local Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service office.
Article by Andrea Bruner, White River Now / Above image: White River Now
Social Security – and other federal offices in Batesville – may not be slated to close, Independence County Judge Kevin Jeffery announced Thursday, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some changes down the road.
For a decade now, the bottom floor of a county building that houses 911 Dispatch has sat empty, but Jeffery and his predecessor, Robert Griffin, have been in talks for at least half that time to woo the federal government into relocating some of the offices currently housed above the Batesville Post Office.
Those offices would include the Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service. As of this time, the Social Security Administration is not included in the package.
Jeffery stressed that the Social Security office is a separate issue, that SSA would remain on Dry Kiln Road, off Harrison Street, in a building owned by Lane Fishmore, Batesville, LLC / Ned F. Mobley.
What is facing closure is the SSA hearing room, which is a conference room off campus – Jeffery said it is actually in the post office building.
FSA and NRCS are located on lower College Street in the federal building (pictured below), which is owned by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).
Image: Gena Tate, White River Now
The federal courtroom was shuttered in Batesville before Covid. Losing the court system as a tenant, Griffin speculated, was “a death blow” to the building as a whole, with plans to eventually turn the building over to the United States Postal Service, which occupies the first floor.
Griffin said there is a protocol for federal buildings, with priority given to organizations that provide services for the homeless, but he said there is no “properly vetted” organization that provides housing or other services here.
He said the county did not want that space because of the overall overhead – namely, the annual maintenance price tag of $250,000.
“Could we move things? Yes. Would that be the right thing for the taxpayer? No,” Griffin said.
In the meantime, the GSA was disposing surplus property at that time, and Griffin said he jumped at the opportunity to upgrade some of the county’s equipment.
“I’m a scavenger,” Griffin said. With crews led by Glen McKay, then the county’s maintenance supervisor under Griffin, “We stripped the whole thing – we got everything we could unbolt.”
The USDA was still looking for space, and Griffin put out a solicitation for the building where Health Resources of Arkansas formerly had its offices on Myers Street across from Row Lake. The building was opened in 1976 as the Independence County Mental Health Center.
“In 2020, the USDA started talking to the county about relocating to one of our county buildings,” Jeffery said.
“It was great optics – the federal government working with county government, besides the direct benefits to the citizens of Independence County,” Griffin said.
But the project soon stagnated, Jeffery went on to say, with no commitment from the federal government.
“I’m in my third year now (as county judge), and I’ve been meeting with the USDA on a weekly or biweekly basis on Zoom or otherwise, and we have gone through tremendous hoops,” he said.
Miller Newell Engineers Inc. of Newport came on board to provide estimates on remodeling the building to specifications requested by the USDA. Part of the proposal was that the county would fund the renovations, and the USDA could pay that back over a five-year period.
“After much chagrin, we finally went to bid on the remodel on the mental health building,” Jeffery said.
The original remodel cost was about $18,000 during Griffin’s term, but the modifications to the plans have skyrocketed the estimates to nearly $800,000.
“The low bid came in at $760,000,” Jeffery said. “That’s including some parking lot work, but they want to remove some interior walls, and that creates loadbearing issues. We are trying to accommodate all their wishes.”
Griffin said several updates had already been made, including a new roof, lighting, and HVAC. Some updates were during Covid, when it was first thought that dispatchers might have to sequester themselves during the pandemic. The generator for the bottom floor was wired into the 911 center on the top floor, so it would have power even during an outage; showering capabilities and sleeping areas were added.
“Then everything just kind of lay there, although we would check in,” Griffin said.
After President Trump was inaugurated, he immediately instituted a hiring freeze on federal employees. Following closely on the heels of that action was an announcement that the president’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would be targeting federal workforce numbers as well as some physical agency offices to save on costs.
Earlier this week, Jeffery attended the Association of Arkansas Counties’ County Judges meeting in North Little Rock and was talking with Congressman Rick Crawford’s representatives regarding the federal offices.
“I got an email that said this project has been put on hold temporarily until they work through some things,” Jeffery said. “So we’re on hold. … Just to get to bid, it’s been like a root canal – visual and braille signage, emergency panic buttons, special locks for doors, on and on and on.”
But the bids have an end date, and as Jeffery said, “Miller-Newell has skin in the game; they have to be compensated.”
“When I came into office, I told the USDA, if y’all are not interested, tell me now because I’ve got things I want to explore,” Jeffery said.
He said plans were for the federal government to take two-thirds of the building, not the entire bottom floor, including the southern end, to house approximately 15-17 employees.
“My mom worked at the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (now FSA) – she worked there 44 years, starting out with Jess Carpenter, in the building the county is remodeling. It was built in 1904 at that time every county had an ASCS office,” but times have changed, and consolidation has been around long before the current presidential administration.
Still, he said, Batesville is a regional hub and he would hate to see any offices here close.
Griffin agreed, noting that as a farmer, he has made many trips to the offices on the second floor above the post office.
“It would be a lot less convenient – a lot of that business is not done electronically. … It would require an adjustment … you would lose some of that personal touch.”
Above images by Andrea Bruner for White River Now
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