Facilities panel: Are we needed? They hope to find out after next week's County Board meeting By Ray Barrington News-Chronicle Members of a committee looking at Brown County's facilities plan for the next quarter-century are beginning to wonder if they're wanted. The Facility Master Plan Committee put aside discussions of a possible two-campus setup for county government until next month while waiting to see what happens with past decisions that have been scored by County Executive Carol Kelso. Kelso vetoed three items in an Administration Committee report, one on recommendations for the Mental Health Center and two on the two-campus plan, which would place some government departments in northeast Green Bay near the Brown County Jail and the Mental Health Center. Although the vetoes apparently have no legal standing under state law, Kelso said she took the action to show her personal disapproval of the votes. She said she is open to a two-campus idea but wants more analysis on costs, benefits and the effects of moving some of county government out of the downtown area. Facilities committee member Mary Marquardt said the committee wasn't sure what the County Board will do next week. "If they're against this then there's no reason for us to continue," she said. She fought for the Administration Committee to approve the basic outline of the two-campus plan last week while two members said they wanted to hear what Kelso's Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Mental Health Center found through its work. The committee did discuss possible renovation of the Mental Health Center for other purposes and what remodeling would be needed to turn it into office space. Assistant county facilities director Dean Gazza said the older part of the center would need a large amount of remodeling even to house something as basic as storing records. The building would require extreme remodeling for any patient or office use and could not accept modern air conditioning and other mechanical additions. "And we don't need all that space for records," Gazza said. The newer section, built in the 1960s, was built to be flexible, he said, and could handle a variety of tenants, whether as offices or as a revised mental health or other center. It has about 66,000 square feet, the same amount as the Northern Building, which was refurbished a few years ago for $10 million. Any decisions regarding the future of mental health care in the county are on hold until a task force commissioned by Kelso issues a report. Committee members said they would like someone from the task force to meet with them next month and get some idea of where they are heading in order to start adding those ideas into a facility plan.