Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Sheriff says taxes not needed to fund jail

Funding review hearing set for Dec. 6


By MATT FURBER
Express Staff Writer

Gearing up for a Dec. 6 public hearing on a funding plan for a proposed $10.5 million public safety facility to be built in Airport West in Hailey, Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling last week ran through the latest numbers for operating the proposed facility with the Blaine County Commission.

The county will hold the public hearing to decide whether to request judicial review of a plan to borrow funds for the proposed facility to house a new 86-bed jail, the sheriff's office and an emergency dispatch center. The request is for an exception to Idaho law requiring an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the electorate before a county can enter into debt that carries over into more than one fiscal year. Typically, funding for construction or improvements to a public amenity such as a jail is paid through a voter-approved bond. If the judicial request is forwarded next week, it will go before the court sometime in January.

According to Femling's latest pro forma and presentation to the board last Wednesday, the new facility is designed for the future needs of the county into the year 2025 at an annual cost of just under $600,000 per year. Over a 20-year period the annual sum would cover operations at the new jail and service the debt for construction if the proposed loan scenario receives judicial approval.

Under the proposed plan, the annual debt burden for the county would be $700,000. Femling said 70 percent of the total jail budget, including the cost of construction, would be funded through sources other than property taxes.

Femling predicted that once the jail is built judges will sentence more people to jail time, establishing external funding from housing and work-release charges billed to inmates and state and federal dollars that stream in. Currently, because the existing jail is regularly overcrowded, Femling said more would-be inmates are posting bond rather than serving time.

Femling explained that housing inmates reins in jail costs also because the county has been paying to ship inmates elsewhere due to overcrowding. With the new jail, the county could house its own penitentiary-bound inmates to the tune of $40 per day until state beds open up. That service could bring the county about $146,000 per year up from the current $18,500 the county will see this year. Also, as in the past when the existing county jail was not as busy, the county used to get funds from helping to house inmates from neighboring counties with space problems.

Femling estimated that the county could bring in some $100,000 per year housing inmates from neighboring counties at $48 per inmate per day. Femling additionally estimated, conservatively, that the county could bring in at least $39,000 per year in federal dollars from housing illegal aliens under the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) until illegal inmates are deported or shipped to face charges elsewhere. An illegal alien charged with a crime can be held locally for up to four days. The county has received SCAAP funds since 2001, which added up to $147,000 in 2002 and could add to the county's bottom line in the future because the federal government has approved another $100 million for the program.

Maintenance and operation costs of the proposed facility would jump about $170,000 annually to about $1 million per year and the debt service for construction if approved would be about $700,000 per year for two decades. Utility and labor costs at a new jail are only expected to increase slightly. The number of jail employees is expected to stay the same with salaries increasing at a rate of 3 percent.

Femling said in conclusion that the portion of the county's budget that is made up from property taxes is 30 percent, which he said is a fiscal impact on taxpayers for the new jail of about $174,000 annually. The rest of the funds necessary to operate the jail and finance the debt come "from other revenues."

"This analysis clearly shows that we do not need to raise property taxes or sales tax to pay for this facility," Femling said. "We can do it within our existing budget."

Earlier in the day last Wednesday, county commissioners agreed to take the judicial review request to the Dec. 6 public hearing.




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