During a decade of explosive growth, the county has not set
aside any money for the proposed $20 million expansion of the
county jail and relocation of the Sheriffs Department and Probation
Department and, in fact, it has yet to finish paying for the jail
it built 14 years ago.
Hollister – During a decade of explosive growth, the county has not set aside any money for the proposed $20 million expansion of the county jail and relocation of the Sheriffs Department and Probation Department and, in fact, it has yet to finish paying for the jail it built 14 years ago.
Now, the Board of Supervisors is searching for nearly $20 million to fund the project.
Last January, the board gave San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill the greenlight to pay Facility Design $30,000 to assess future space needs and create a master plan for county criminal justice agencies. Facility Design reported in November that current and projected population growth in the county will continue to overburden the county’s already crowded law enforcement facilities. The jail, which houses 125 inmates, will need 50 more beds by 2010, according to the report.
The county had not previously put aside any money to expand the jail or build other new law enforcement facilities and is still trying to pay off the original construction costs of the jail built in 1992, County Finance Director Dan Vrtis said.
Fees levied on developers to pay for infrastructure needs like roads, sewers and government buildings created by new development are still being collected and used to pay off the 1992 jail construction project, Vrtis said. In 1993, the county instituted a 47 cent per square foot law enforcement impact fee on new construction to pay for the jail and juvenile hall facilities. A new 1,600 square foot home would generate $752 for the fund, for example. The fees generate between $300,000 and $400,000 during a year with lots of new construction, but only raised $211,000 last year, Vrtis said. That fee has never been raised, Vrtis said.
“Impact fees are part of the solution, but from now until 2013, they are spoken for,” he said. “I don’t think that any one is looking at impact fees as the only source of funding.”
Supervisors had not previously considered raising the fee to pay for jail expansion or new law enforcement facilities, Supervisor Reb Monaco said Wednesday.
“We just never looked at it I guess,” he said. “But there has been some discussion of that and I expect it will be discussed more in the future.”
Now, supervisors are eyeing an $8 million fund the county received following a 1998 lawsuit in which the United States sued several major tobacco companies for $246 billion to pay or the project, Monaco said. The $8 million fund has been specially allocated and can only be used for capital improvement projects, Vrtis said.
Supervisors also have their eyes on state funds, but when and how much money the state will provide is not yet known, Monaco said. Hill believes the governor’s State of the State Address today may provide some answers in that regard.
Impact fees aside, Monaco said the county has been as prepared as possible from the growing population of inmates and the need for new law enforcement facilities.
“I think we’re already ahead of the game by taking action now,” he said. “I don’t think you could have predicted this kind of growth with the clearest crystal ball.”
The population of San Benito County has grown from 36,697 in 1990 to 56,243 in 2004 – an increase of 65 percent, according to the most recent statistics available from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Fellow Supervisor Pat Loe said the county is in the process of conducting a study on impact fees and expects to see the results of that study in the next few months. Loe said population growth and the subsequent need for jail expansion that it carried with it was not foreseen.
“When we did the budget we decided it was time to do a study to get those fees up to date,” she said. “We knew it would happen, but nobody thought it would happen this soon.”
If completed, Hill expects the new jail and facilities to last for at least 20 years and said the Board of Supervisors has been supportive of his efforts to get the construction and relocation project started.
“The Board recognizes that we need to have the appropriate tools in order to do the job,” he said. “We’re looking out into the future because we know what the trends are.”
Brett Rowland covers public safety for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or [email protected].
