AUBURN — Two Androscoggin County commissioners recall setting aside $16,700 in late 2014 to furnish the new Probate Courtroom, but county Administrator Larry Post and Treasurer Robert Poulin can’t locate it in the budget.

“We can’t find that the money is available,” Post told commissioners at Wednesday’s meeting. “It was never put in the budget.”

Commissioners were expected to approve a bid for furniture for the new courtroom for the Probate Court. The bid came in slightly higher at $17,400. When checking to see how to fund the extra $700, Post and Poulin discovered the original money was not there.

Commissioners Randall Greenwood and Elaine Makas remember earmarking $16,700 for that purchase in November 2014 and carrying that amount over in the 2015 budget.

However, Post said there is no record of it in the 2015 budget and he could find no written record of money being carried over for that purpose in the minutes of the meetings that he reviewed.

The courtroom is furnished with a few old tables and benches that facilities director David Cote was able to scrounge up.

If the carryover was not specifically included in the budget, then the money may be gone, Greenwood said. He added that the county cannot tap into the $100,000 in the contingency fund because this would not qualify as an emergency.

Makas urged an exhaustive and thorough review of the written records from 2014 in hopes of finding evidence of the funds. Commissioners agreed to table the issue for one week so more research could be done.

Funding was also an issue for the cornice and gutter repairs. The low bid for the work came in at $200,000, but the county had only allocated $50,000 for the work.

The bid was off because “no one had ever done that kind of work around here before,” said Cote, who had consulted with an architect before submitting his estimate for the work on the historic building.

Seeking a less expensive option, Cote suggested he could place a rubber shell inside the gutters to stop the leaks, which has been done in the past. The short-term fix would likely cost about $2,000 but would not repair the cornice.

“That buys us time until we figure out what we’re going to do,” Cote said.

Commissioners agreed to reject all of the bids for the cornice and gutter work and asked Cote to come back with more information on his short-term solution.

In his report to commissioners, Post said Lt. Lane Feldman has been appointed assistant jail administrator. He added that the county’s IT office was moved from the basement space adjacent to the servers to a spare room on the first floor. 

The new recording system for the Probate Courtroom was recently installed, Post said. The outdated system was replaced because it was not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Commissioners, with the support of the Budget Committee, approved spending $8,000 from the 2015 budget’s contingency fund in November to replace the system.

ssherlock@sunjournal.com