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Wilkes board scales back plans for jail
Change will cut cost to about $15M
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Published: November 4, 2009
WILKESBORO - Wilkes County commissioners agreed yesterday to move forward with plans for a new 256-bed jail.
The plan is a compromise after commissioners balked at spending an estimated $26 million for a 298-bed jail and law-enforcement center.
The compromise plan would eliminate space that includes the law-enforcement center, full-service kitchen, work-release area and other items, reducing the expected cost to about $15 million. The new jail would relieve overcrowding at the men's jail, which state jail inspectors have threatened to shut down.
Commissioners voted unanimously yesterday to pursue the alternative to the original plan. They still need to decide whether to put the project out to bid or use a managed form of construction. They would still have to approve final bids.
But yesterday's vote broke an impasse and authorizes the county manager, county finance director and sheriff to move ahead with plans for the new jail.
Neil Shepherd, a principal in Blue Ridge Engineering in North Wilkesboro, worked with the sheriff's office to develop three alternatives to the original plan.
One would have been on the same site at the rear of the county courthouse, but had 230 beds for men only. The women's jail in North Wilkesboro would have remained open.
The other alternative was a dormitory-style jail beside the county's animal shelter. That plan would have had a section for women. That plan would have allowed the county to close the women's jail, but required the men's jail to remain open, with the dormitory space to relieve overcrowding.
The plan commissioners selected, Plan C, is a jail with enough space for both a men's and women's section, allowing the county to close both the current men's and women's jails.
Sheriff Dane Mastin said he still wanted the original plan, which would have met the county's needs for the next 20 to 30 years, but recommended the alternative that commissioners wound up selecting.
"It allows you the most efficiency," he told commissioners before they voted. "You close both jails … and you lose all your liabilities on both facilities. You can build on in the future, add on as you need."
A key issue is that the original plan was so expensive it would likely have required a tax increase.
In June, the county finished paying off the courthouse and library, freeing up $1.2 million a year that it plans to apply to a new jail.
Mastin told commissioners that the compromise jail plan would allow the county to do what it needs to do, even if it doesn't have all the features of the original jail plan.
"This is the next best thing to keep that going without hitting the taxpayer too hard, and yet you can expand it," he said.
mmitchell@wsjournal.com
667-5691
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