PARIS — Logan County officials will take between nine months and a year to address the questions involved in designing, financing, building and operating a new county jail, planning officials said.
Rusty Meyers, assistant executive director of the Western Arkansas Planning and Development District, told county officials that he didn’t think they could put a jail project before voters by the Nov. 6 general election.
Voters likely will be asked to approve a sales tax to pay for construction and operation of a new county jail. The project is so important to the county that it should be the subject of an uncluttered ballot, Meyers said.
“It deserves its own attention, and that’s why it’s our opinion it needs to be put ina special election,” Meyers said.
Meyers and the planning district’s Sasha Grist met last week with Logan County Judge Gus Young, Sheriff Steve Smith and seven of the Quorum Court’s 11 members to advise them on how to develop a larger jail for the county.
Until the meeting, county officials knew only that the 23-year-old jail is too small for the county’s needs and is becoming a maintenance problem.
“We have so many people coming to jail from different areas of the [court] system, we’ve just outgrown this jail,” Smith said.
The jail initially was built to hold 20 inmates. Over the years, Smith said, the jail’s day room and holding cell were converted to cells to hold the increasing number of prisoners.
Former Sheriff Mark Limbird, a Quorum Court member, said the jail population averaged 26 to 31 inmates a day during his tenure from 2001 to 2006.
The jail held an average of 38 inmates a day from Smith’s first day in office in January 2007 through 2010, the last year for which he has statistics, said David Spicer, jail administrator.
That average is more than the jail’s capacity of 34 inmates, 30 males and four females. Men can be housed in the women’s section when there are no women being detained, said Smith. That setup allows as many as 40 inmates to be squeezed into the jail.
Even with the lack of space, Smith said, he has no choice but to isolate troublemakers, those with medical problems and accused child molesters, who are often targeted by prisoners for beatings. Such factors make it difficult to place prisoners.
“It’s musical cells,” he said.
Smith said he would like to have a jail that holds 75 to 100 inmates.
The last inspection report by the Criminal Detention Facilities Review Committee in July reflected deficiencies. Space was inadequate for the number of prisoners, inmates were not separated according to the severity of offenses and inmate workers were not separated from other prisoners, the report said.
The report said the number of on-duty jailers is insufficient, the kitchen is too small, there are no smoke detectors or fire alarms, and the firefighting equipment and visitation areas are inadequate.
Randy Rankin, coordinator of the state’s facilities review committees, said most small, overcrowded jails in the state have similar deficiencies.
“Everything goes downhill when you’re overcrowded,” Rankin said.
Logan County isn’t under court order and it’s not in danger of being shut down because of the deficiencies, he said.
Smith said he is concerned that prison policy changes the Arkansas Legislature passed in 2011 could exacerbate his crowding. One change, for example, raised the dollar value at which a theft can be considered a misdemeanor from $500 to $1,000, Smith said, which could result in a person convicted of stealing a $750 generator being sentenced to the county jail for the misdemeanor rather than to prison.
Limbird said more offenders will be given probation under the act, which he believes will increase the number of people violating their probation. Those people land in the county jail as well, he said.
Young said the Quorum Court considered enlarging and renovating the current jail for about $1.5 million but rejected the idea because the current site is landlocked and a larger jail would have meant the loss of all parking.
The county must find a new location for the jail, he said.
The cost of extending utilities to a remote site might be too costly, so it’s likely the jail will have to be in or near a city, Smith said. The county has two seats, one in Booneville and one in Paris.
Meyers countered that the county should be concerned less with the cost and more concerned with the jail being in a location that will serve the county’s needs for the next 50 years.
Quorum Court member Charles Pearson said the deliberate pace the county plans to take will allow time to hold town meetings to educate the public about the project.
“It’s not so much that everybody expects to have their way,” Meyers told the officials. “But everybody wants to have their say. And you have an obligation as an elected official to listen to them.”
County officials are considering whether to ask voters to approve a sales tax to support bonds that would raise money to build the new jail. Young said a portion of the tax would expire once the bonds were paid off but another portion would have to continue permanently to provide money for additional operating expenses of the new, larger jail.
The amount of the sales tax can’t be calculated until the size, location, design and other costs of the jail are determined, Young said.
A 1 percent sales tax in Logan County generates about $1.8 million a year, Young said.
The county receives 56 percent of an existing 1 percent tax, while the rest is divided among municipalities.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/26/2012