Committee To Review Jail Addition Cost
One of the major issues Sullivan County commissioners must face will be coming into focus next week.
The topic will be a major addition to the county’s overcrowded 23-year old jail that may cost more than $5 million.
A jail planning committee of five commissioners appointed by County Judge Lon Boyd will sit down Wednesday and discuss two major questions.
First, is $5 million too much? Secondly, how is the money going to be raised?
The jail committee also must review architect Allen Dryden’s preliminary plans and see if any proposed facilities can be cut out to keep the cost down.
With the current political climate in Sullivan County it’s a good bet commissioners more than likely will let voters decide in a bond referendum rather than take the attitude they are elected to do what’s best for Sullivan County and find 17 yes votes to approve a bond issue without the voters.
Factors leading to a public vote will be the fact that Sullivan County already is obligated to repay $40.6 million in school construction bonds authorized without a referendum and the 50-cent tax rate increase repayment of the bonds will impose on rural property owners next year.
As many as 133 inmates were housed at one time last year in a jail built to hold 116, making the addition necessary. Men, women and juveniles are not put in separate areas and several lawsuits charging inhuman conditions have been filed in U.S. District Court against the county and Sheriff Mike Gardner.
County officials believe federal authorities may force the county to build a new jail.
At the committee’s direction, Dryden has prepared plans for a two-story addition that would provide beds for 200 inmates. It would be attached to the present jail in the courthouse parking lot.
“It’s really an inverted T wing that goes off the end of the existing facility with the leg of the T facing north,’’ Dryden said.
“What they’ve got it to costing now would be better than $5 million, and, of course, the longer you put it off the higher it’s going to get,” committee chairman Lake Barnes said.
“We’re going to have to see whether the commissioners want to put it before the voters or go with the approval of 17 members,” Barnes said.
Dryden said the proposed jail addition would take a year to 15 months to build.
“If you look at this presently planned facility as being a solution for the next 30 years, it becomes financially feasible — at least in the eye of average figures around the country,” Dryden said. “But what’s financially feasible in the country may not be in Sullivan County. That’s what the political process is going to have to determine.
“I won’t know what the budget amount of the project would be until the building plans are definite,” Dryden said.
“We have waded through a mountain of regulations and minimum and maximums and all kinds of standards for jails from various points of view — all of which were very conflicting and very contradictory,” he added. “The cost could run somewhere between $15,000 and $42,000 per bed depending or whose standards and whose point of view you’re looking at.”
Extensive remodeling also is planned for the present jail, but its capacity would be significantly reduced to an estimated 50 to 60 inmates because federal and state regulations would require the cells to meet current standards.
