During last Monday’s County Commission Meeting, the commissioners voted to close the Dallas County Courthouse and the courthouse annex building Friday, July 5 giving those employees the day off after Thursday’s Fourth of July holiday.

“I think most all of the state offices within the county building will also be closed,” Dallas County Probate Judge Kim Ballard said Monday. “The only thing we control is the actual two buildings here — the annex and the courthouse. All the county offices within those buildings will be closed. I’m not sure about the state offices, but I’m presuming they will be closed also.”

Ballard said the commission doesn’t always vote to close down operations the day after July 4 — it just depends on where the holiday falls on the calendar.

“By (July 4) coming on a Thursday, it was easy to make a decision just to close one day. If it had been three days (following July 4), that would have made for a little bit longer discussion,” he said. “Next year I guess it comes on Friday, so we’d have to make the decision then.”

The commissioners took only a few minutes to decide on their vote to give the county employees this Friday off, but said that was largely to do with the department schedules that are already in place.

“The main reason is because the road department, which is almost the largest department we’ve got — they already work four 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday, so it didn’t affect them anyway. And the sheriff’s department works holidays, they may par down, but they’ll still be working,” Ballard said. “So it really didn’t leave much of a decision to be made for the rest of the courthouse.”

Ballard said with many state and city offices closing the Friday following the July 4 holiday, it just made sense for the commission to close operations on July 5.

“It’s a non-productive day had we chosen to not be closed on Friday,” he said.