Supervisor questions whether jail project is moving too rapidly

BY BROOKS TAYLOR

Mt. Pleasant News

Is the county jail project moving too quickly?

That?s what Henry County Supervisor Marc Lindeen asked during an update of jail expansion plans Thursday at the county supervisors? regular meeting.

?This looks like a final product,? Lindeen observed while looking at proposed plans distributed by Larry Goldberg, of Goldberg Group Architects, PC, of St. Joseph, Mo. Lindeen said he felt a needs assessment study would be and should be done before proceeding.

Goldberg said the plans were far from a final design, adding that state and federal space requirements for such facilities enable rough sketches to be drawn quickly. ?This is far from a final drawing,? Goldberg stated.

What Goldberg presented Thursday was basically the same plan he presented in November with a few tweaks. His proposed plan is an 11,000-square-foot, 42-bed addition to the back of the current jail.

He said he is still targeting costs at $4 million or below, but admitted that construction costs are difficult to estimate. ?I really don?t see anything that would change that (cost estimate), but we are struggling with an extremely volatile construction market. It is extremely difficult to budget (construction costs). It?s just nuts out there.?

Lindeen also said he thinks other locations should be considered, noting that the county does own land, which could house a jail. ?I?ve had questions as to why we are building here because we would be completely land-locked. We have other land we could build on. I think we should explore other sites.?

Goldberg said other sites would be considered, quickly adding that if the jail were built on a different site, the cost would dramatically rise. ?If you go to another site, you would end up with a $6-$7.5-million project with land acquisition and moving the sheriff?s office. Raising taxes to build a new jail is not on anyone?s agenda.?

Henry County Sheriff Rich McNamee said his office and the jail expansion project would not be totally landlocked, noting, ?we have quite a bit more space in which we could expand. We talked about ulterior sites and Larry said he would look at that before the next meeting.?

Goldberg and McNamee met for several hours Wednesday on the project and the architect said good progress is being made. He added that if the expansion project was connected to the south side of the current jail, there would be several possibilities for use of the current jail, such as storage, offices, training rooms, etc.

He also noted that although the jail would be a 42-bed facility, it never would have 42 inmates housed at once. ?You never fill a jail 100 percent, usually you work on 85 percent of capacity, so actually we are working on a 35-bed jail.?

A new jail or jail expansion has been discussed by the county for over 15 years and has been the subject of two bond issues in the past 10 years, both of which failed. McNamee says a larger jail is needed because the county currently has an eight-bed facility and daily inmate population is between 15-25. That means inmates must be housed in jails in surrounding counties which is costing the county over $12,000 monthly for the transporting and housing of inmates in other facilities. In the past 15 years, those costs have totaled $1.9 million, the sheriff said.

?There?s nothing about this (jail project) that is frilly,? Goldberg said. ?It is steel and concrete, period.?

Goldberg said he and McNamee would continue to meet and update the supervisors periodically. No timeline has been set on the project.