Commissioners delegate Mark Wynn to oversee door security at meetings

At their May 30 meeting, the Adams County Commissioners decided to put Mark Wynn, the county’s building and planning superintendent, in charge of making certain that exterior doors at the Adams County Service Complex in Decatur are locked on the outside once meetings are underway for two important county boards he works with.

Those boards are the plan commission and the board of zoning appeals, both of which meet in evenings.

The commissioners chose Wynn since he’s always at those meetings and to prevent what has happened in the past when meetings are held, but the doors are left unlocked, It was said that, in past years, people have entered the building and just walked around inside, which is a situation that county officials seek to eliminate.

The idea is to tighten security when meetings are held at the often-used service complex, whether meetings are conducted by government groups or others.

The commissioners discussed door security with Rick Burkhalter, the county’s superintendent of buildings and grounds, and with sheriff Dan Mawhorr.

Commissioner Stan Stoppenhagen suggested that the doors could be locked 30 minutes after a meeting starts, so that any latecomers could get in.

Mawhorr suggested erecting gates in hallways to keep people out of areas of the building that are not open to the public when a meeting is held at night. The gates, he said, would funnel people to the ground-floor meeting room that’s used for a variety of meetings.

Burkhalter even brought up the idea of creating an exterior door to the meeting room that would lead directly into it, so that an adjacent exterior door could remain locked, thus preventing unwanted entrants.