County officials eye jail expansion

FAYETTEVILLE — Washington County justices of the peace on Monday asked Sheriff Tim Helder to bring a proposal for a $30 million jail expansion and a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for it to the Nov. 15 Quorum Court meeting.

Helder had the Quorum Court’s Jail, Law Enforcement and Courts Committee tour one pod of the jail Monday before a meeting at the jail annex.

“Trust me when I tell you I don’t want to grow,” Helder told the committee. “It’s just the responsible thing to do. We can’t kick this thing down the road. We’re at a point where we need to ask you if we can move this forward to the Quorum Court to see if we can get this on the ballot.”

James Langford with Spirit Architecture and the Southbuild Team, which includes Smith-Doyle Contractors, from the Memphis, Tenn., area, gave the justices of the peace a presentation laying out basic concepts of a jail expansion and sales tax proposal.

According to the presentation, the county would have a new jail pod built, which would have room for about 500 inmates, plus a

minimum security facility to house another 100 inmates. Langford said a “ballpark” figure on the cost is about $30 million. The county estimates a 0.5 percent sales tax would generate about $20 a year.

The proposed expansion would be paid for by a sales tax increase, which voters would have to approve. The original increase would be 0.5 percent, which would continue in effect until the jail addition was built.

After construction, the sales tax would be cut in half, with a 0.25 percent sales tax remaining to offset the cost of maintaining and operating the jail.

The justices of the peace asked if the county could build the addition in phases to save money or make some space available more quickly. Langford said on a project of this size, the county would see economies of scale in building the entire addition at once.

Justice of the Peace Tom Lundstrum said he wants the county to add as much space as is needed and as quickly as possible.

“Piecemeal construction is not the way to go,” Lundstrum said. “These big cranes and other heavy equipment they need costs thousands of dollars a day. If you build part of it and then bring them back in to build the rest you’ve doubled your cost. When it’s built, it needs to be built.”

The justices of the peace also discussed other ways of raising money for the jail operation, from charging fees to cities that bring prisoners to the jail to lobbying the state to pay more for inmates sentenced to prison and held in the jail waiting for space to become available. The state pays counties $30 per day to offset the cost of housing those prisoners. County officials say the cost to the county is more than $60 per day.

Lisa Ecke, justice of the peace for District 6, said Washington County has become “an arm of the state prison” and something should be done.

“The state should be embarrassed,” Ecke said. “Our legislators should be embarrassed. The governor should be embarrassed. It’s offensive that they pay less than half the cost.”

Bill Ussery, justice of the peace for District 4 and chairman of the Finance Committee, said he’s working on proposals to increase jail fees, including the state fees. Ussery said he hopes to have a proposal by the Quorum Court and sent to state officials and legislators.

“I want to see if we can get all 75 counties to do the same,” Ussery said.

Helder explained the “state inmates” in the jail are for the most part people tried and convicted in Washington County and awaiting space in the state prison system.

He said the jail averages about 125 state prisoners a day out of a capacity of 703 prisoners.

“So when we talk about the state paying, they’re not paying for everything,” Helder said.

Helder also estimated charging fees to the cities might raise some revenue, but wouldn’t address the problem of a growing inmate population. He said the problem has been present for some time and the decision by Springdale to close its city jail spurred him on to seek a solution.

“Were at a point where we have no choice but to go on and build a jail,” he said.