LITTLE ROCK — Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines said he hopes to put out a request for proposals for a jail addition within the next week after the Quorum Court voted Thursday night to allocate an additional $2 million to the public-safety reserve fund, which will be tapped to pay for the project.
After the unanimous voteto add the money, the publicsafety reserve fund will have a balance of a little more than $5 million, County Comptroller Mike Hutchens said.
The $2 million came from money saved through unfilled job positions in the county, officials said.
The 240-bed addition is expected to cost about $5.3 million, and at least 10 of the 15 Quorum Court members will have to vote to appropriate the money once the bids have been vetted.
Already, adding more jail space is drawing opposition.
Justice of the Peace Judy Green said she almost voted against the ordinance that sent the money to the public-safety reserve fund.
“I have been attending various community meetings and I can tell you that my constituents do not wantmore money spent on the jail,” said Green, who represents District 9 in the southeast corner of the county.
She voted “yes” after Villines explained that Thursday’s vote was not to approve the project but to allocate money to the public-safety reserve fund, as well as the emergency reserve fund and the deferred capital maintenance and technology fund.
Jail space in P ulaski County has been an issue since at least 2005, when the county closed a part of the jail containing 250 beds and laid off deputies in response to years of overspending.The jail has room for 1,130 beds but at the beginning of 2010 had funding to operate only 1,055. In late October, the Quorum Court approved funding for an additional 75 beds after making a similar decision midyear to fund 75 beds.
Little Rock, North Little Rock, Jacksonville, Sherwood and Maumelle have a costsharing agreement with Pulaski County for operations at the jail. That agreement expires in 2013.
In March, Villines and Sheriff Doc Holladay sent the mayors of those cities a memo laying out a plan that would see the county pay one-third of the jail’s operating costs and leave the remaining two-thirds to be split among the municipalities.
Currently, the cities together pay about $2.3 million a year for jail operations, with Little Rock paying $1.4million, followed by North Little Rock at $625,000.
The proposed addition would open in stages, making 80 new beds available each year for three years, and would cost about $971,000 to operate, Villines said. The jail has a $19 million 2011 budget.
Holladay has said he hopes the jail addition would be completed by 2013.
He noted in an April presentation to the Quorum Court that even if the cities failed to come up with their share of operating and construction costs, the county could still use the facility.
The addition would have six self-sufficient, 40-man pods, each with its own power and climate control so that any one of the six could be shut down without affecting the others, Holladay said. The new facility also would have training space for the staff, he said.
A county the size of Pulaski needs 1,500 to 1,600 jail beds to meet the needs of local law enforcement, Holladay has said. Villines has said the lack of jail space leaves low-level criminals with little fear of violating court orders that require such things as house arrest or attendance in prevention, intervention or treatment prog rams because they know there is no room in the jail for them.
After the meeting, Holladay said he was pleased with the Quorum Court’s decision.
“I appreciate the action that will allow us to go out for bids. I’m very hopeful we can get this process completed quickly,” he said.
In a presentation to the Quorum Court last month,Holladay noted that when he presented plans for a jail addition in 2008, the estimated cost was $4 million. He warned that the cost would continue to rise and that the county should build the facility now while it has the reserve funds to do so without asking voters for a tax increase.
“Over the past two years, the county has been able to build a healthy public-safety reserve,” he said. “We’ve been able to have all this growth, and the continued growth we’ve had in opening more beds, without any additional taxes.”
Hutchens said the bidding process would take about 45 days.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/06/2011