County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner

SPLOST Questions, continued

Q.   I saw that adding on to the new jail is one of the SPLOST sales tax projects. Since we just built the jail, why do we need to add on so soon?
A.  First, the “new” jail has now been in existence for five years.  It was under funded and way too small when it was built.  It was built for 52 inmates and is now averaging 80 with the maximum we have had in it being 100.  Several times we have had to board our inmates in three different counties at one time.  This means a deputy has to go pick up the inmates for hearings and then take them back to the respective locations.  This also means not only are we paying deputies overtime for this, not to mention the high cost of gas and wear and tear to the vehicles, but we have to pay the other counties to house the inmates for us. In 2006 we paid $8,435 in boarding fees and to date this year we have paid $25,640 in boarding fees.  We must add on to the jail to ever keep our operations budget in check.

Q. Since the jail was completed while you were in office, why did you not build it larger?
A. The short answer is that the land was purchased, the site was prepared and graded, the utilities were installed, the footings were dug, the plans were completed, the contract was let and the bonds sold to build it with.  It was too far along and too late for me to be able to make any changes.  I just got the headaches of having to oversee construction.  In addition, during construction, I had to spend out of the general fund over $100,000 just to regrade the site to keep dirt from falling off the bank into the building and to keep the front corner from sliding off the pad.   We then had to borrow nearly $1.5 mil to complete the building since there was not enough money set aside to pay for it with. We just paid off that debt last year.

Q. Don’t you gripe too much about the jail?
A.  Only when it is mentioned.  I could never gripe as much as I would like to on this subject.  In fact, I will not comment further as I would probably make some people mad.  I do not question that those involved in designing the jail had good intentions, but the final product was well below what should have been built.  The term “penny wise and dollar foolish” comes to mind.

Q. Why do we have so many people in jail?
A.  Unfortunately, growth always has a cost and this is one of those.  What makes it even worse is the methamphetamine use and general drug crisis that is occurring in all North Georgia counties.  Through our Sheriff’s Dept. SERT (Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team), drug busts and arrests are at an all time high.  Our Sheriff and his deputies and investigators are doing an excellent job of working to someday hopefully help make our county drug free.  This past week they were also successful in catching a bank robber, a very rare occurrence.  Thanks to fast action from the bank employees and deputies willing to risk their lives in pursuit of this criminal, he is now behind bars in Union County.

Guess what, although we are thankful for his capture, we now have to feed, clothe and provide medical care for him for probably a year until his case works its way through the court system. The cost to the taxpayers could be in the tens of thousands of dollars.    

Q.  Is there room to add on to the jail?
A. The jail was built basically on the side of a mountain and there is not any additional room without doing a significant amount of grading.  However, after analyzing our options, we feel that the grading and filling on site, will be cheaper than moving to another site and starting over.  It is really frustrating having to spend millions of dollars on criminals, but the alternative is that we would have to turn them loose, and that can not be an option. Fortunately, we have SPLOST sales tax dollars to pay the cost of any new construction without it coming directly from property tax funds.

SPLOST continued next week

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