The West Washington Street office complex containing the suite that will house the Marquette County Public Defender’s Office is pictured. The Marquette County Board of Commissioners approved a one-year lease for the office space located at 228 W. Washington St., Marquette, at Tuesday night's meeting. (Journal photo by Cecilia Brown)

MARQUETTE — The Marquette County Public Defender’s Office now has an official home, as the Marquette County Board of Commissioners has approved the lease of a suite in a building along West Washington Street to house the office.

With Commissioners Joe Derocha and Bill Nordeen absent from the meeting, the board unanimously approved the one-year lease Tuesday night.

The new public defender’s office will be located in a suite at 228 W. Washington St. in Marquette, officials said, as it’s unable to be housed in the Marquette County Courthouse due to space constraints.

County officials, along with the recently-named Marquette County Chief Public Defender Patrick Crowley, spent time examining and touring various office spaces near the courthouse before deciding upon the location along West Washington Street, Marquette County Administrator Scott Erbisch said.

“This is a continuation of the development of the public defender’s office,” Erbisch said. “Now that we have a chief public defender on board — while not officially here fully yet — one of the tasks that I was hoping that they would be involved with is selecting some of the rest of the staff, as well as identifying the location that worked for what they see the vision of the office would be. We toured numerous properties within a few blocks of the courthouse complex here and we were able to find one that was very well suited to us.”

The one-year lease of the office, at $22,856 annually or around $1,900 a month through O’Dovero Development of Negaunee, is covered under the budget for the public defender’s office, much of which was funded by the state, Erbisch said.

The suite that will house the office is about 1,500 square feet and includes five employee parking spaces, as well as spaces for clients, he said. Utilities and services such as lawn maintenance and snow plowing are included in the rent, but the county will be responsible for telephone, internet and cable, as well as janitorial services and routine office maintenance, board documents state.

Marquette County Board Chairman Gerald Corkin asked Erbisch when he expects the office to be up and running.

“I don’t want to give you a full date yet because there’s a transition process that even if we are fully staffed, we’re going to have to work with the courts as far as who’s got what cases right now and transitioning,” Erbisch replied, adding that under Michigan Indigent Defense Commission requirements, the county has six months from the date funding was received to get the office fully operational, which places the deadline in mid-May.

Commissioners also asked Erbisch how many people the office would employ and if all of the remaining positions were filled. Erbisch responded that in addition to the chief public defender, two assistant public defender attorneys, an office manager/legal secretary and a legal secretary would be employed by the office.

“We’ve got one other assistant public defender position that’s been filled, so we’ve made progress there,” Erbisch said. “The internal posting has gone up for the office manager/legal secretary right now. That’s underway, and we’re looking for one more attorney and we’ll be advertising shortly internally for the next legal secretary.”