Benton County Courthouse turns 100

Well, the architecture, you know, this is a classic, classic building. The architecture, the direction of the building pointing north, how it looks downtown, Prosser. The building represents more than just the architecture. It is, quite frankly, thousands of staff members have crossed these doors, staff members, judges, attorneys, all the different offices represented in the county here and city, which is not necessarily the architecture of the building, but it's the fabric of the community. This is a magnificent civic building. I would argue that in the Yakima Valley, this is the most substantial, most grand, most historic civic building in the entire Yakima Valley. It's very important. And it's very important for Prosser's community identity. So, Prosser's one of those unique communities, you know, it's a small community here within Benton County, but we have great partnerships and relationships, everything with, you know, the PD here, the government here, but the people here. There are so many people that come in here, that help us with our impacts with law enforcement, but also just what we do within the city. And there's just so many different avenues that we cross paths with the school districts and everything else. And so the events, you know, the parades, those types of things where we're constantly there. And so it's really important to keep these relationships together and support Prosser as a city, but also as the county scene. Moving to the first floor for the city meant that we no longer had our planning department and our building department in an annex building that was outside of City Hall. We moved into the county's planning building, actually, right after the fire. And so from there, we were separated. And so when we moved here, we were able to have all City Hall staff under one roof. So building, planning, public works, city administration, finance department, HR, we're all under one roof now. Time Capsule is a collection of our values and the artifacts that represent the values of the community and of the county. And there was quite a collection from both the city and the county. There's currency in there, money, there's some books, there's proclamations, there's newspapers, many other artifacts that capture 2026 and capture the values that we hold dear.