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Don’t let them kid you; there is plenty of unused space in the Polk County Courthouse. It has corridors wide enough for Metro Waste Authority to hold garbage truck races, ceilings way, way higher than even Shaquille O’Neal would need for jumping jacks, and convoluted passageways that might be an excellent setting for the next “National Treasure” movie.

Perhaps Nicolas Cage could unearth a secret document explaining why Polk County can find ways to give us sports and entertainment, but runs into so much trouble trying to add elbow room for the government.

The problem with the courthouse is a lack of usable space, and with a referendum coming on April 29 on a proposal to build a new facility next door, the desperate people who work there have started offering public tours to argue their case. Last week, District Judge Robert Hutchison donated nearly two hours of his valuable time to lead six of us – three media people and three interested citizens – all through the courthouse from the basement to the fourth floor.

Convincing the public six people at a time seems like kind of a slow way to go about it, but maybe traffic will pick up.

The tour-givers have some solid statistics on their side. The building was intended for four judges, four courtrooms and various county offices when it was constructed a little more than 100 years ago. Now we have 27 judges, two juvenile referees and a probate judge competing for enough space to dispense justice.

As the population of Polk County increases, demands on the court system rise, too – the county held 150 jury trials in 2005, 171 in 2006 and 192 last year. We can assume that trend will continue unless people are going to get nicer, and there’s no reason to suspect that.

Where are we going to put everybody and everything, is what Hutchison wants to know. The basement can’t hold any more file boxes, so a lot of the court’s records are stored several blocks away. If you need a file, you ask a runner to go get it. Even though runners make several such trips each day, “I can count on a half-day delay to get a file,” Hutchison said.

On some Mondays, as many as 250 potential jurors show up, and there’s no single room large enough to orient them all at once. And, more important, there are just three restrooms for the ladies and two for the gentlemen in the entire building. (Bottled water hadn’t been invented back in 1906, which might be a partial explanation.)

The increased workload and the impractical design mean that the central corridors host a dramatic mix of humanity: people with minor problems and those with extremely major ones; families on opposite sides of emotional cases; lawyers, judges and discontented citizens.

The thing that bothers Hutchison most is the sight of juveniles in restraints sitting in the broad central hallway, awaiting their turn in court. “I’m really troubled by kids in shackles being in public view,” he said.

But there are plenty of lesser details not to like, too. His least-favorite courtroom is 210, where you choose between using the heating and air conditioning system or actually hearing what’s being said.

Then there’s 313, which Hutchison calls “the primary cockroach courtroom. You never know when you open a book what you’ll find inside.”

On the bright side, he reported, “We do still have some rat issues, but they’re not as bad as they used to be.”

So, sure, it would be great to have a well-designed, secure and safe additional facility on the spot across Cherry Street that’s now a parking lot.

The question is, as always: How much do you want to spend? The latest plan for a new building plus a courthouse remodeling is priced at $127 million. Sounds a little high.

But construction is getting more expensive every day, and Hutchison contends that this plan will be cheaper in the long run because we’re spending so much now to rent space and transport various people to various locations.

We probably should do something. We’ve been devoting a lot of money and energy to making Des Moines look nice. But this other stuff, this deciding who’s right and wrong and who deserves help or punishment, that’s kind of important, too.