By Bill Grubb

ROGERSVILLE — Although repairs on the heating system at the Hawkins County Courthouse are a work in progress, that is little consolation to employees who spent Monday and Tuesday struggling to stay warm.
    Earlier this summer the county’s Building Committee discussed the leaking boiler but took no action on the project.  When the subject was discussed again at an October 8 meeting, repairs were     authorized.
    At the October meeting the committee accepted a $19,990 bid from Boiler Equipment Company of Knoxville for a new sectional boiler for the courthouse furnace.
    It was estimated the repair project would keep the furnace out of commission for approximately six weeks, with county officials still predicting the repairs will not be completed until after Thanksgiving.
    On Monday office workers were wearing coats and some were able to use space heaters, although that met with mixed success.
    “I plugged one in but it kept knocking out the power strip and it had to be reset,” Administrator of Elections Patricia Lumpkins said.
    She also said a thermometer in a vault in her office indicated the temperature stood at 63 degrees by mid-day.
    In the circuit court clerk’s office several space heaters were running Monday but employee Donna Sharp said attempting to use several others tripped a circuit breaker.
    “I turned it on and it knocked out the computers.  We would have been a little warmer but couldn’t do any work,” Sharp said.
    The repaired heating system will also have what may be a relatively short life.  Once the new Justice Center and Jail is completed next year the courthouse is scheduled to undergo a renovation that will include an entirely new heating a cooling system, making the old boiler and furnace obsolete.
    “Then this (the cost of the new boiler) is basically money that will be wasted,” Commissioner Charlie Thacker noted at the October meeting.