Our districts have been away from NRCS for a long time. One has leased a house from the State for $1.00 a year. One uses an unused part of a building at the state university and one uses room at a community ag building.

Most of us work remotely in general.
Dick

In Missouri we have several "stand-alone" districts in counties where there is no USDA service center. Most rent space, but some have purchased buildings for cash or through rent to own type agreements. Our districts are basically not statutorily allowed to go into debt. We do provide additional administrative funding to stand-alone districts that have to pay rent. Generally speaking, we prefer for districts to co-locate as the benefits far outweigh the negative. For example, we save several million per year in rent and phone costs (USDA covers both).

Many of our districts in Vermont are also at the point of outgrowing NRCS office space. Some already have. We have a hybrid work-from-home/hot desking situation in some districts.

We have one district that bought a small office building this year. Funds for that purchase came primarily from an appropriation from the legislature: We included the cost of the building in the capital portion of our overall budget request we presented to the legislature, which was a first-ever ask for us.

Before they bought their new office building, that district had an office space donated to them by a local college. That might be a route other districts could look into. However, the reason that district decided to buy their own because the college space was also too small and not ADA compliant.

Generally, we'd like to stay in USDA office spaces since that gives us an immediate connection with NRCS staff and customers, but it's really limiting our growth, and USDA doesn't seem to be able to relocate or expand as quickly as we would need. One possibly is that some districts might do both: maintain a one- or two-staff presence in the USDA service center and get a separate office space in a location more advantageous for their constituents, but that's going to depend on the future of the appropriations we get from the state legislature.

Some MN offices are separate and have joined other local govts in County Courthouses most often. NRCS (or now FPAC actually which is no better on any of the shared space management issues) can be a good partner but not always and not always the preferred option. The USDA technology is a benefit but becoming less important. The joint customer service can be a benefit for ag areas but communications technology has made that less important too.

LeAnn Buck at the MASWCD can help with more details if needed.

https://www.maswcd.org/