Santa Cruz County District 3 Supervisor Bruce Bracker met with a group of community members August 4 to present the plans for renovating the county building across from the Fairgrounds.
The plans call for enlarging and upgrading the Sonoita Library, a community meeting room, enlarging and moving the sheriff’s substation to the back of the building, replacing the HVAC system, and adding a satellite office for the WIOA Workforce Program, run by the Santa Cruz County Career Center. There will be an accordion wall between the library and the meeting room. Plans for a separate room for a visitors’ center have been scrapped. Instead, the county is looking to provide a kiosk for visitor information.
The project will be going out to bid in the coming weeks, with funding coming from the County’s general fund. The WIOA center has already been funded through a federal grant, which is also providing improved internet service from Verizon which will be shared with the library.
This was the final public meeting to discuss the renovation plans for the county building. The “next phase of the conversation,” according to Bracker, is how to manage the building. Questions, such as ‘will there be a charge to use the community meeting room’, or ‘who will be managing the building’ are still unresolved. For example, a similar building in Tubac is managed by a community foundation, he pointed out. Bracker was clear that the county will oversee the renovation, but that the community will have to decide how the building is managed.