Gardendale resident Virginia Brody walks out of the city’s Jefferson County satellite courthouse on Tuesday after renewing her handicapped license. The county commission voted 3-2 to close all four satellite offices on Tuesday. The closure will take effect on April 23.

The Jefferson County Commission voted on Tuesday to close the Gardendale satellite courthouse, along with three others, in an effort to make up a $73 million hole in the county finances.

The vote was 3-2, with commissioners George Bowman and Joe Knight voting against the proposal to shut down the courthouses. Knight is the commissioner for District 4, which contains Gardendale and much of north Jefferson County.

“I told them I’ve got two courthouses in my district and I wasn’t going to vote for it, because it just wasn’t a money saver,” said Knight.

 

Commissioners James “Jimmie” Stephens, Sandra Little Brown and Commission President David Carrington voted to close the courthouses.

“I just hate it,” said James White, a local man who was at the Gardendale courthouse Tuesday renewing his vehicle tag. “I don’t like going down to Birmingham and having to hunt down a place to park.” He said the last time he renewed his tags he mailed the paperwork to one of the Birmingham courthouses; it was months before he received he tags.

Virgina Brody moved to Gardendale from Chicago six months ago. She was at the annex on Tuesday to renew a handicapped license. She said moving the paperwork from Chicago to Alabama was a very difficult ordeal, and that a local office would help make things like license renewal simpler.

“I hope it doesn’t stay closed. I need a place close by,” she said.

According to Knight, the operating budget for the entire county is $165 million, and it costs around $2.6 million to operate the four satellite courthouses. The $73 million gap is caused by the lack of a business license fee and occupational tax, both of which existed in 2010.

The courthouse will be closed in April of 2010. Both Knight and commission finance committee chair James “Jimmie” Stephens, who was in favor of the courthouses’ closure, have said any cuts the commission makes will be to break even and not to increase revenue.

The employees at the Gardendale office will be relocated to either the main courthouse in Downtown Birmingham or the one in Bessemer. Courthouse employees’ work hours will be cut down to 32 hours a week; salaried employees will not be affected. Knight said he suggested closing down the satellite courthouses one extra day a week instead of closing them down completely.

“I went and hung out at the Gardendale branch a little last week, and what I saw were older people, the people who won’t go on the Internet to apply for all these things and need to go to a courthouse,” said Knight.

The satellite offices closed briefly in 2009 in an effort to reduce the budget by $38 million.

None of the other four commissioners returned calls for further comment Tuesday.