For the week of April 9 - 15, 2003

Sheriff: new jail
needed badly

Private construction-lease
agreement proposed

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By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling put it simply and without frills.

"I can’t guarantee (the community) a safe and secure jail" to hold prisoners, he told the Blaine County Commission at the end of an hour-long presentation Monday on why a new jail is badly needed and soon.

Not only is the 30-year-old jail too small (28 beds in the main jail with another 16 beds in an annex on Airport Way in the industrial area), but also it is literally rotting, the sheriff said. He said he’s itemized some $250,000 in urgently needed repairs, including a leaky roof that threatens telephone wiring of the dispatch center as well as old cell locks that are no longer manufactured. The jail has only a makeshift kitchen where prisoners fix their own meals.

But unlike three other occasions when construction of a new jail relied on bond issues that were rejected by voters, Sheriff Femling is proposing a new facility be built by private capital then leased by the county for up to 30 years and paid for with revenues generated by the jail and with no tax support. Lease-purchase agreements by government entities are permitted under Idaho law. Ownership of the jail facility would then be transferred to the county at the end of the lease period.

Commissioners instructed Femling to compose a Request for Qualifications--literally, an invitation to various experts to offer and explain their competence to be part of a team to design and build a new jail.

Femling will return to the commission next week for approval of the RFQ, which then would be published. Thereafter specific proposals would need to be developed and approved by the county.

Femling mentioned the year 2005 as when he’d like to open a new facility, one that he estimated would cost nearly $6.4 million.

Even before reaching that phase, Commissioners Sarah Michael and Mary Ann Mix suggested several possible sites--on county-owned land on Glendale just off State Highway 75 in Bellevue or on 3.5 acres of county property on Airport West adjacent to Friedman Memorial Airport.

To suggestions that a new jail be considered for property near the present facility, Commissioner Mix was adamant: she said she would oppose a new downtown jail.

Femling said the Airport West site would be okay, but he also argued for downtown Hailey sites near the present sheriff’s department headquarters and jail, in order to control staffing costs associated with prisoners attending bail hearings and trials in the adjoining county court complex.

Pointing to representatives of Blaine County city police departments sitting in the audience, Femling said a jail too far out from Hailey would add to the costs of police departments transporting people under arrest to the county jurisdiction and lost time of officers due to travel.

In his 16-page presentation, Femling stitched together a meticulous case for a new facility as well as a consolidated dispatch center to house the expanded, new 911 emergency system approved by voters last November.

With a population growth rate of 4 percent over the last 12 years, Femling said Blaine County’s population by the year 2025 would be 30,000 on the low side of estimates or just under 45,000 on the high side if the 4 percent rate were applied. He then projected the number of cell beds needed for prisoners if the average jail stay is 10 days or 12 days before prisoners are released or are transferred to a state prison facility after sentencing.

In the 10-day model, Femling estimates the ideal jail facility would need 108 beds by 2025 to not only provide separate male and female lockups but also separating prisoners by classification.

In the 12-day model, the jail ideally would need 130 beds by the year 2025.

But even with a larger facility, the sheriff said he believed his present personnel staffing of 45 would not need to be expanded.

One of the dramatic changes Femling said the jail must face is the rapid increase in the number of female prisoners, some of whom must be sent to Burley in Cassia County for lack of accommodations here. With more than 1,000 outstanding warrants his deputies must serve, Femling pointed to growing numbers of scofflaws that might add to the jail’s cell demands.

His charts on costs and paying for the lease also covered little-known revenues the sheriff collects--such as $25 a day paid by each work-release prisoner, $40 per day paid by Idaho for each state prisoner held in the jail, $25 per day by each other prisoner as part of incarceration and federal payments for holding illegal aliens.

Femling said in fiscal year 2002 he collected $255,438 in various revenues. He estimates revenues of $490,758 from a new, larger jail that could house more prisoners paying more daily per diem.

Commission chairman Dennis Wright suggested to Femling that if a new jail and sheriff’s headquarters is built away from the present site in Hailey, some of the sheriff’s functions relating to the district court be kept nearby.

 

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