Country to try and pass jail bond one more time

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

The Elmore County Commissioners will try one more time to convince the voters that the county needs a new jail.

A $7.3 million bond issue will go before the voters on May 24, utilizing essentially the same plan as the one that failed last fall when it fell 6 percentage points short of the required two-thirds majority (67 percent) needed for approval.

County commissioner Larry Rose, who stressed the need for the county to replace the current jail, which is rated as the worst in the state right now by the Idaho Jail Standards Commission, pointed out that in the last 11 months the price of the facility has climbed more than $850,000 due to inflationary costs of materials.

"Every year we wait, it gets more expensive," he said. "The situation isn't getting any better."

On a $100,000 home, the cost would be just under $6 a month in taxes.

Last week the commissioners invited 85 people to attend a meeting to help promote the jail bond, the county's fourth attempt in just over a decade to replace the aging facility that no longer meets the standards set by the state and federal government.

The three previous attempts to pass a jail bond had all enjoyed a majority of voters saying "yes" to the proposal, but all had failed to achieve the 67 percent required for approval, in one case failing by a margin of only 13 votes. In at least two of the cases there had been only lukewarm support, at best, from the county commissioners. This time, the new board of commissioners will push hard for the voters to approve the plan.

Sheriff Rick Layher gave some of the history of the jail to those assembled at the meeting last week.

Originally built in 1974 to house 32 inmates, the jail first started to experience problems in 1986 when the ACLU sued the county, citing 90 points of deficiencies, including lighting, security, food service and an inadequate exercise area.

"Everything had to do with the physical plant," he said. "We entered into a consent decree and did a lot of fixes. But they were all bandaids, temporary fixes."

Over the years, more lawsuits came, some from inmates, and more temporary measures where created to satisfy the deficiencies cited in the lawsuits. But, Layher said, "I'm running out of bandaids."

In the early '90s, the capacity of the jail was sharply reduced as a result of several court rulings and legislative actions that required prisoners to have a little more space and be segregated by classes of prisoners. Each cell that had six beds in it could only have four, for example. And more importantly, besides the standard segregation of males and females, juveniles had to be separated from adults, and adults charged with different classes of crimes, such as violent felonies, had to be segregated from those charged with less violent felonies, who had to be segregated from those simply being held on misdemeanors. Murderers, or those charged with murder, for example, had to be kept separate from all other inmates. As of Monday, three cells were being taken up by three individuals at the jail who have been convicted of murder but not yet sentenced to prison, or who have been charged with murder.

And a special area had to be set aside for any prisoners with infectious diseases.

Overall, the maximum capacity of the jail fell to only 18 inmates, and, if the "wrong" classes of prisoners wound up in the jail, the capacity could drop to as low as seven.

Yet, as the population of the county has grown, the number of people that the courts have determined need to be taken off the streets and incarcerated has grown as well.

Increasingly, that has resulted in Layher being forced to house prisoners in other county's jails. Besides the manpower and vehicle maintenance costs involved in transporting prisoners back and forth for court appearances and discussions with their lawyers, the state's sheriffs have set a $45 per day cost for anyone housing a prisoner at some other county's jail.

With only a small degree of hyperbole, Layher joked that Elmore County taxpayers had virtually paid for Owyhee County's newer jail, where many of his "remote" prisoners are placed.

In the last three years Elmore County has spent $162,720 housing prisoners in other jails (at $45 a day), and spent $38,000 in transportation costs, for a total of just over $200,000.

With a new jail, Layher could help defray some of the costs of the bond and operating costs of the jail by being a source for other county's prisoners, becoming a net importer of prisoners -- at $45 per day -- rather than a net exporter, the commissioners noted.

More importantly, the new jail would meet all current standards, which would, among other things, improve overall security and reduce the chances that any prisoners would escape. Several years ago a pair of prisoners, taking advantage of some "holes" in the "bandaid" patches at the jail, had escaped and subsequently killed a forest service employee.

Currently, prisoners housed on work-release programs, in which they are allowed to work at their jobs but must return to jail for the evening and night, have been moved into a former courtroom in the basement of the law enforcement facility across from Hacker Middle School. But Layher said many of them have figured out that the ceiling tiles can be moved aside, and it is not unusual to find them wandering through the office areas in the locked in basement at night.

The new facility being proposed would provide for 36 regular jail beds, in "pods" that could be monitored constantly by a single jailer, and which provides adequate space for all the different classifications of prisoners. In addition, the plan would provide for 36 work-release beds.

For a small cost of only $50,000 more, under current materials costs, the jail could be expanded to a total of 136 beds for both regular prisoners and the work-release prisoners.

The new jail, which would be built on land the county already owns near the city police station, would be designed to house prisoners only. The current law enforcement building would remain as the administrative offices of the Sheriff's Department.

Layher said that the proposed jail should handle the county's needs through at least the life of the 15-year bond. And, after taking care of the Elmore County prisoners, "I'm pretty sure I could fill it," with prisoners from other counties, he said, reaping the benefits of the $45-per-day fee for housing them.

Layher pleaded with citizens to approve the bond. "I can't get my jail certified," he said. Last year, "we were the third worst jail in the state," but since the two jails rated as worst have subsequently been shut down by the courts, "now we're number one."

"If we didn't need this," Layher said, " I could add five more patrol officers for the same cost to protect the people. But we do need this. I can't do my job with this facility. We've just put on too many bandaids."

If the bond fails this time, the county will be forced to rethink how it will fund a new facility. The commissioners are reluctant to go the route of certificates of participation, which would bypass the voters, but that, or some other possibilities, would have to be explored they believe, although any other options, they have indicated, would be a last resort.

"The bottom line is, we need a new jail," Rose said. "If we don't pass this, I don't know what we're going to do, but we have to find some solution.

"The need continues to grow, and so do the costs."

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