ASHLAND — Paused planning on the county’s title office future home has been unpaused: the office will move to the dog shelter.
Design drawings on the new $6 million administrative building don’t include room for the title office, said Ashland County Commissioner Jim Justice.
Talks of a new office building have been ongoing for years, given the limited space for county administrative functions in the courthouse.
The plan, as it stands, is to build a new administrative building on vacant land at the intersection of Cottage and Fourth streets. The existing courthouse will be reconfigured to better suit court-related business.
But plans for the title office, currently located on the bottom floor of the Ashland County courthouse, have ping-ponged since February.
That’s when commissioners hired VSWC Architects to design a new space for the title office at the dog shelter. But in March Ashland County Clerk of Courts Deborah Myers voiced concerns with those schemes.
Her concerns resulted in a pause. Commissioners said they’d consider keeping the title office in the new reconfigured courthouse, or perhaps find room at the new administrative building.
By Thursday, those considerations apparently ceased.
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Justice said Myers came to the commissioners’ office and expressed support for a title office move to the dog shelter.
“I think there were some misconceptions about what’s going to happen,” Justice said. “(The unfinished dog shelter space) has got its own HVAC unit, it’s gonna be insulated. It’ll be a brand new building.”
Commissioners originally estimated building out the dog shelter for title office purposes would cost $300,000. Now, that number has inflated to $500,000, according to Commissioner Denny Bittle.
When asked, Myers said the commissioners are the ultimate authority over buildings and grounds. She said if moving the title office to the dog shelter is the best move, than she agrees.
County officials hope the title office move to the dog shelter will help attract a Bureau of Motor Vehicles office move to the same building. Bittle said having both entities in the same building will make those operations more efficient.
“If we can get that all in one stop, that’d be really cool,” Bittle said.
But there’s no guarantee that will happen. Currently, AAA operates as the deputy registrar in Ashland County. Operations are subject to a bidding process held by the state’s BMV. The next contract, therefore, will be up for bid in June 2026, Bittle said.
Ashland County plans on bidding for the job, and Myer’s title office would take over if it won the bid.
“But we’ll see,” Myers said.
