The Adair County, Missouri municipal government apparently let a courthouse roof leak for more than seven years rather than paying $8000 for a repair that would have stopped the leaks.  Now, there is mold and extensive water damage in a beautiful and historic building where the county's irreplaceable public records are stored.

An article in the Truman State University student newspaper reports what seems at first to be a pretty ordinary story-- a story about extensive flood damage in the local county courthouse due to a leaky roof:

After a weekend away from the office in early May, Pat Shoush was flooded with work on Monday morning when she found her desk and cabinets soaked in water.

Heavy rain at the end of April clogged the Adair County Courthouse gutters, leaked in through the walls and sat on the ceiling tiles above the County Recorder's office. During the weekend, the tiles bowed and broke, releasing large amounts of rainwater that had accumulated in a corner of the office.

Shoush, Adair County recorder of deeds, said the office became a difficult place to work in because of the clean-up required and the smell that the rain water left behind. Shoush said the Circuit Clerk office has had problems with leaks in the past, but the smell was never as bad as this.

Courthouse roof needs repairs

According to the article, the Missouri Department of Health has found mold present everywhere.  At least one county worker has reported sinus and headache problems.  The cleanup process has taken months, and is ongoing.  The county has paid for having the wall and ceiling tiles repainted and sealed and having the carpets cleaned and treated.  The company which did the carpet cleaning recommended that the floors and wall plaster be ripped out due to the extensive water damage, but the repairs would have been too costly for the strapped county budget.

All pretty understandable to this point, right?  The combination of old infrastructure and budget constraints led to an unfortunate situation where a hard rainstorm led to some considerable water damage.

But hold on a second-- here's the rest of the story:

County Commissioner Mark Thompson said he took interest in the courthouse repair project. He said water leaks have been an ongoing problem for many years and that he has compiled a list of other necessary repairs and changes.

Thompson said a major cause for leakage was poor roofing that was done approximately seven years ago. The flashing, which is the weather protection on the joints in roofs, was not effectively installed, and water easily seeped through and down the walls of the building. Because of this, water constantly got into the courthouse attic where many documents and historic items were stored.

"It's almost embarrassing to place buckets in the attic and let [water] drip in those buckets for seven years," Thompson said.

The commissioner's office contracted with a roof repair company in the Kirksville area to fix the flashing and leaks for approximately $8,000. Thompson said this stopped the leaks, but the previous water damage has slowly caused deterioration in the courthouse.

I had to read this about three times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding the timeline here.  Did county officials really put buckets in the attic of the courthouse to collect leaks for seven years, and then, AFTER catastrophic water damage due to a rainstorm, stop the roof leaks with a repair that cost only $8000?  And they did this in a building used to store important paper documents?

Apparently, that is exactly what happened. Amazing.

A 2008 article in the Kirksville Daily Express reported that the county received a $20,000 grant-- 2.5 times what it would have cost to stop the leaks in the roof-- "to perform a feasibility study on the building," which the article said was the "first [step] in the process of preserving the Adair County Courthouse."  I'd have to respectfully disagree: when you have a building with a leaky roof, the first step toward preserving the building is to stop the leaks!