BUCYRUS—After budget cuts twenty years ago when the Sheriff’s Station went in, this year is the year that they are hoping to finally get an evidence-building put on-site at the Sheriff’s Station.

Before recently, the old evidence storage building was the armory located on E. Southern Ave. across from the YMCA. Before serving as the evidence building, it used to be Camp Millard, an army training camp back during World War II. After the war, the building was no longer needed and was turned over to the County Commissioners at the time.

The commissioners used the building as storage from 1953 up until the 60s when it was turned over to the Sheriff’s Station where it was used as an armory and evidence facility until the spring of 2020. At that time, SCAT (Seneca-Crawford Area Transportation) approached the commissioners about wanting to rent the building after they took a tour of it with Sheriff Scott Kent.

County Commissioners, Mo Ressallat and Doug Weisenauer, agreed to turn the building over to SCAT for a monthly rent of one thousand dollars, to use as a storage facility for their vehicles. Current County Commissioner and former Deputy Sheriff, Tim Ley abstained from any decisions in this matter to avoid a conflict of interest. Before acquiring this building, SCAT kept their vehicles behind the Crazy Fox Saloon.

Leaving them without a storage facility, an old railcar was bought and put on blocks behind the Sheriff’s Station to use.

That, however, is not a long-term solution. Aside from the typical, “small” pieces of evidence that get stored, there needs to be a place where vehicles from fatal accidents need to be kept until the investigation is over, the Sheriff’s Station owns a special response team truck and some other vehicles that need to be able to be stored.

“I think that it is a facility that is needed, it’s one of those projects that nobody does think about until you need it. We are being proactive and in the long run, it’s a good thing for the community to have it,” current County Commissioner Doug Weisenauer said.

The new evidence building will be built on the property where the current Sheriff’s Station is and will feature evidence bays, potentially a classroom, and room to store any other equipment. There will also be a private access road put in that goes from the Sheriff’s Station to Mansfield St. The building will be approximately 7440 square feet, and should the bids come in as expected, the project will cost around one million dollars.

“It’s going to be a lot more convenient for us to be able to store our equipment on the grounds because before we had to drive across town any time, we needed anything from the old facility,” Sheriff Kent said.

Aside from being convenient, having the building on the property will help maintain a chain of custody.

Though there hasn’t been a problem in a couple of years, there have been instances where people cut through the fence at the old armory and stole evidence.

“We had to fix the fence and put up security cameras to maintain chain of custody, so having the evidence storage facility on-site will be one of the big benefits,” Sheriff Kent said. “The second or third benefit is us being able to store our vehicles right on the grounds. The national guard building was fine, but there was really no way for us to monitor what was going on at that building, so the guys would patrol when they were in that area and make sure nobody was messing around in the building.”

Bids for the project went out on January 6 and are open on February 18. The tentative date to begin construction is March 15, and the project will take about eight months, putting the end date around November 15.

Should the bids come in favorably, this project would be funded from the general fund, but mainly from interest earned on investments.