Friday was the last day to enter the old Broward County Courthouse through its main entrance as contractors prepare to tear it down.
It’s about time!
The continued use of that crumbling building for decades past its use-by date is another testimony to how government works.
Or doesn’t work.
Broward County Commissioners tut-tutted about the problem for decades until then-Broward Mayor Stacy Ritter made a new courthouse a priority roughly eight years ago. Ritter — She is now the county’s tourism director — created a Courthouse Task Force and then rammed the long-delayed idea through.
Instead of a replacement, commissioners before Ritter used a Band-Aid approach to the Courthouse problems.
The last major work on the courthouse was in the early 1990s, almost a generation ago. It was an era when there were less judges, less cases and less paperwork. Before the 1990s, the courthouse additions were built in 1970 and 1972.
In the 1990s, additions were sutured on the soon-to-close central courthouse building — a new criminal courts building on the north and a renovated eastern courthouse wing.
What was new then is old now.
