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The Court has developed and maintained a customer service program for <br />unrepresented litigants, for roughly the past year. The increase in unrepresented litigants is <br />staggering, and their issues are substantial. The only space for this program has been in the <br />public lobby of the Courthouse. That is a terrible place to hold sensitive conversations with <br />citizens with serious personal situations. Since it is the only option, however, we have a staff <br />person assigned there, we hold meetings there, and we conduct personal interviews there. In all <br />honesty, that is totally inappropriate. <br />You asked what space we could use. As you lrnow, the Sth floor is designed for <br />quick and inexpensive conversion to court facilities. Those facilities were planned a number of <br />years ago and are still desperately needed for the uses for wiuch they were intended. <br />In addition, if space were available in the basement area with the District Attorney <br />relocating, much of his office space would be appropriate for conversion to a more adequate jury <br />assembly room and jury staff office. This space is desirable for use by jurors since it would be <br />isolated from the courtroom areas, buffering jurors from inappropriate contact with litigants, <br />lawyers, witnesses, police officers and others. <br />If the basement space were not available, then much of the first floor, south end, <br />would be taken up by a jury assembly area. If it is not required for jurors, it should be converted <br />to hearing/couriroom and chambers space. With the two Sth Floor courtrooms, the Courthouse <br />would have 12 courtrooms for use. At least one more hearing room on the lst Floor would be <br />helpful to handle calendars with substantial public attendance (high profile cases), ta allow the <br />added security of controlling the foot traffic on the first floor. ~ <br />With the relocation of the jury assembly room off the 2nd Floor, that present room <br />would be best used s a small hearing/video hearing room. This will become even more critical as <br />the criminal calendars continue to grow and the two courtrooms at the Annex reach capacity. <br />Clearly, it is more fiscally responsible to use video technology than to attempt to expand the <br />Court Annex facility. <br />With the shuffling of current offices to the new space, the programs such as the <br />customer service office in the lobby can be relocated into more appropriate and acceptab?e <br />quarters on the first floor. Any and all remaining square footage can be put to valuable and <br />needed uses as small meeting rooms for mediations, arbitrations, settlement conferences and . <br />other ADR-based programs. Also, attorney/client waiting rooms are badly needed. <br />It should be remembered that none of this is a surprise. The "Facilities Master <br />Plan" of December 1993, prepared by W.E. Group, found under "projections to 2413": <br />~ <br />2 <br />