ELKINS — In addition to its regular meeting on Thursday, the Randolph County Commission will hold a special pre-construction meeting at the Wees Annex that will provide updates on the new Circuit Courtroom.

The special meeting will get underway at 1 p.m. and will be followed by the regular meeting at 1:30 p.m. Randolph County Commissioner David Kesling told The Inter-Mountain Monday that the construction company for the courtroom project has been selected.

“We have awarded the bid to Veritas out of Fairmont to do the construction of Jaymie (Godwin Wilfong)’s courtroom,” he said. “They (Veritas Contracting, LLC) are coming to the meeting to go over the construction timeline. I have asked all the elected officials to be there, because in one way or another, it’s going to affect all of them for the next couple of months.”

Kesling said he expects work to begin at the James F. Cain Courthouse Annex next week. The project will feature a courtroom and chambers for Wilfong, who was elected in May as Randolph County’s judge. 

House Bill 3332 created new judicial circuits for the state and assigned the number of judges each circuit would have. Randolph was one of the counties in the state that were determined to have a second judge.

“The bid came in for the construction at $218,000 and there were two companies who submitted bids, Veritas and another from Belington,” Kesling said. “The Belington bid was higher at $240,000, so that’s why we went with Veritas. They are anticipating overruns, and we still have to buy furniture and stuff, so we are probably looking at a $300,000 project that the state is giving us no money to do. We have to pull from our existing budget to fund (it).”

The regular meeting will feature eight items on this week’s agenda, including an informational presentation on the Randolph County Pool and Splash Pad, and an update from the organizers of the West Virginia Wild and Wonderful Celtic Festival and Highland Games held this summer at 4-H Camp Pioneer.

“We have asked the people who run our pool and splash pad to give us an update at the end of each season,” said Kesling. “We want to keep up on how many visitors the pool had, where the visitors came from, what went right, what went wrong, and what are some things we can change for next year. So Stan (Teets) from the Elks Lodge is coming to give us the update.”

Kesling said organizers from the Celtic Festival will discuss how things went with this year’s event.

“The organizers wanted to give us an update on the Festival and I think they had some issues this year with 4-H Camp, so they wanted to share that with us since we own that ground and sit on the 4-H Board of Directors,” Kesling explained. “He wants to give us an update on what he ran into this year.”

The Randolph County Commission will also be approving and signing a Domestic Violence Proclamation during the regular meeting. The month of October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

A hire for the Randolph County tax office is also on the agenda, along with appointments at the Valley Head Public Library and Helvetia Public Library

The commissioners will also consider approval of a West Virginia First Foundation Letter of Support.