Is it any wonder that Chautauqua County Mental Health Department officials are looking for new office space?

Last year, department employees spoke to City Council members about issues with parking ramp security after one employee’s car was vandalized while the employee was working in City Hall. Now, the roof leak in the Third Street municipal building – which of course leaks into the Mental Health Department’s offices – is prompting the department to sign a short-term lease with the city as it looks for a new home.

The move is a blow for a city that will be looking to replace revenue when the county eventually moves its office into another location that doesn’t have a leaky roof and a better parking arrangement for county employees. But the bigger problem is that the issue was preventable.

Concerns about the parking ramps had been raised long before last year when the city had ample resources to deal with the problem through ARPA funding. Concerns about the leaky City Hall roof and other issues with the Mental Health Department offices in city hall had similarly been raised repeatedly with resources available to take care of the issues.

There is no shortage of office space in the Jamestown area that could handle the county’s needs, yet the city seems to have acted as if the county had no other options and would stay in an agreement in which the county’s employees and the people the county is serving are using substandard offices.

It’s ironic Jamestown is constantly working to crack down on bad landlords when, in this situation, it hasn’t been very attentive to the needs of one of its renters.