As the engineering firm of Garver and Garver continues their assessment of the old jail building, there have been some issues come up that may limit the possibility of repairing the roof. This damage has been growing for about 10 years and in that time a lot of things have changed.

Due to changes in the city construction codes, it may not be feasible for the roof to be repaired. If that is the case, we may have to come up with plan B. This might be the construction of a temporary steel building to house prisoners until a permanent facility can be built. This should not cost much more than the repair of the roof. The county would then have the time to demolish the old section of the jail and build a new one.

The great thing about this is once a permanent facility is built, we will have two work centers instead of just one. At that point, our capacity will have grown by 400 jail beds instead of the 300 we would have by repairing the roof. However, it all comes down to finding the funds to support the staff and daily expenses of those extra beds. I am continuing to pour over the expenses to find areas where we can save money in order to house more prisoners.