City eyes site for sobriety center
Council expected to OK talks on use of medical examiner’s facility.
Autopsy tables and body coolers at the Travis County medical examiner’s facility could be replaced with beds for public intoxication suspects as the city contemplates turning the building into a sobriety center and a police substation, according to city officials.
At the City Council meeting Thursday, city leaders are expected to give the green light to continue negotiations with the county to create a facility where intoxicated people could sober up instead of going to jail. They could also approve further analysis into whether the medical examiner’s current facility would be a good location for the center.
Both city and county leaders have worked for more than a decade into making the sobriety center — also known as a “drunk tank” — a reality.
After passing resolutions to develop a center last year, a committee made up of police staff, a local judge, city and county staff and community leaders drafted a report suggesting steps to create the facility.
The 26-page report was released in April and concluded that officials would need at least $1.3 million to pay for 27 full-time positions and
a 5,000-square-foot facility holding 30 to 40 beds.
Council Members Kathie Tovo, Ann Kitchen and Greg Casar, along with Travis County Commissioners Margaret Gomez and Gerald Daugherty, were appointed in June to an intergovernmental working group responsible for finding a location for the sobriety
center, developing a governing structure for the new facility and creating a funding model.
On Thursday, they will seek approval from the city to explore the terms for converting the Travis County medical examiner’s facility — located at 1213 Sabine St., less than two blocks away from University Medical Center Brackenridge — into a sobriety center.
Council members “are very positive about the location,” Assistant City Manager Rey Arellano said.
The three-story building could be modified to also house a new downtown police substation, according to Austin Assistant Police Chief Jason Dusterhoft.
If the city follows through with the plan, the morgue and body coolers on the facility’s first floor would be replaced by beds and medical offices for the sobriety center. The toxicology and histology laboratories as well as the doctor’s offices on the second and third floors could possibly accommodate 100 police officers serving the downtown area.
Tovo said more work has to be done, especially because the Travis County medical examiner’s facility won’t be vacant until 2017. She said the building appears to meet the criteria for a sobriety center, but it’s “really just one possibility.”