Jail will likely be on ballot (06/10/08)

Jay County is preparing for a November referendum on an expansion of the county jail, even though plans for the project have yet been finalized.

County officials working on the possible jail expansion project have begun collecting signatures on a petition to move toward a vote on the November ballot.

The petition asks for signatures of property owners or voters in the county on whether they would be in favor of a jail expansion. These petitions will likely be presented to the Jay County Council Wednesday for consideration.

"Yes we have started with a petition that has to be signed to enter into a lease, so that has to begin before we even start talking about the jail," said county auditor Nancy Culy. "But nothing is going to be final as far as going forward with the jail until (Wednesday's) council meeting."

Although nothing about the jail is on the council agenda for Wednesday, a timeline for the project shows the petitions being presented at the evening meeting.

A resolution to find a need for the lease, which the county will need in order to fund the construction, is scheduled for Wednesday night also. Jeff Badders of SchenkelSchultz Architecture in Fort Wayne estimated building costs will be around $6.8 million, but the total project cost will be closer to $10 million.

The county will have to create a leasing company and then borrow the funds through that company to pay for the expansion. There are restrictions on how much the county can borrow and the jail expansion would exceed that amount.

"You can only do 2 percent of your assessed value as far as bonding," Culy said, "Well, we're over that, so we have to form a lease company that will actually do the bond."

"We can either own it, borrow the money through bonding, or we can let another entity, a corporation that would be formed for the sole purpose of building, ... do the borrowing if you lease from them," said attorney Lon Racster.

For the county to do the borrowing, it must have the approval of the voters in November. If the council decides to move forward, a public hearing about the potential lease with the commissioners will be held July 1, one of the first opportunities for public discourse on the topic.

While the process allows the county to obtain the lease it needs, there's risk involved since the county has to make preparations for the expansion before the people vote on it. If the public votes it down in November, the county can't act again on it for one year, effectively stagnating the plans.

The expansion comes with a major price tag, but Jay County sheriff Ray Newton needs the breathing room. Although the inmate population is continuing to climb, Newton said the biggest need at the jail comes on the administrative side.

Six or seven officers share one office. Two dispatchers work in one room with equipment completely covering the wall.

The 911 director, a job that should come with some privacy, sits just inside the entryway of the office at a cramped desk. Not even the sheriff has his own office.

As for the inmates, it's a game of musical cells as prisoners are rotated. The 55 bed capacity is sometimes short on places to house women, sex offenders or troublesome inmates.

"Right now we can't properly segregate because we don't have the room for that," Newton said. "We can move people around - it may work for a couple days, for a week - but then we have to move them somewhere else. We have to find somewhere else to keep them or we've been taking them to other jails."

The capacity has also limited the number of Department of Corrections prisoners Jay County can hold. For each DOC prisoner held, the jail is paid a stipend by the state. Jay County has seen reduced DOC population because of space, which has limited a source of revenue.

"That money will go back into the general fund and it could be used for several things and one of those things could be paying off the bonds faster," Newton said.

The jail has raked in around $300,000 in past years from housing DOC prisoners and a larger facility could help the jail pay for itself over time.

"We're going to have to leave it up to the voters," Newton said.

Come November, if everything moves according to the timeline, the expansion will be in the hands of the voters. But even if voted down, Culy said it will have to happen eventually.

"I just wish people would understand that if we don't do it now, someday it will be (state) mandated," she said. "If they mandate it, it's done, it goes outside the tax levy and you're doing it."

Commissioner Milo Miller Jr. would rather build sooner than later. As seen with Dunkirk's combined fire and emergency medical station, material costs are exploding. The building was designed to fit within a $500,000 grant, but when bids were opened June 2, the lowest bid was about $113,000 greater than expected.

"I think a lot of that is just material cost in the last 6 months," said county engineer Dan Watson about the Dunkirk station. "The cost has just been unreal."

If the county waits longer to put up the expansion, the estimated $10 million project could soar even higher.

"It's not going to get any cheaper," Miller said.[[In-content Ad]]