As a Quorum Court member and this years budget committee chairman, I am working hard to increase the number of jail beds at the Pulaski County Detention Center open to hold prisoners. However, before we can increase our population, we must complete some major repairs to the oldest portion of the jail buildings. The roof over pods A, B, C and D (each of which have the capacity of 80 prisoners) must have major reconstructive repairs done to the roof and interior. The old sections of the jail also need new heating boilers and air conditioning units installed.

Below you will find a link to a timeline, which will show the steps we must complete in order to bring the building back up to occupancy status.

Step 1: An engineering firm has been hired to inspect the current building structure to make sure that it will be safe to repair and put a new roof on the existing structure. This firm has told us that the estimated time needed will be 6 weeks and has started on their evaluation on November 1st. However due to the holidays we do not expect a report back before the first of the year.

Step 2: Once we have a favorable report from the engineers, RFPs will be sent out and an advertisement for bids will be published. This process is expected to take from 30 to 45 days to complete.

Step 3: The bids for the work will be received and submitted for committee approval. This process is expected to take approximately 2 weeks.

Step 4: The winning bid will have to be submitted to the full Quorum Court for final approval and the funds for the repairs appropriated to the project, which will take another 2 weeks.

Step 5: The winning contractor will have to schedule the work to begin which is expected to take another 30 to 45 days.

Step 6: From this point, once the work has begun, the entire project is expected to take approximately 5 months to complete before prisoners can physically occupy these four pods.

By the time the building is ready for occupancy, the funds to operate the additional beds should be available. But the Quorum Court simply MUST hold their current course of responsible appropriation of funds and spending of tax payers dollars. This year, in 2007, the Quorum Court held the line and made hard choices and my goal is to continue that same calling through the upcoming year of 2008.

Allen Kerr

CLICK HERE to see the timeline.

JAIL FUNDING - Progress report

The preliminary numbers are in on year-to-date county revenue as of October 31st and the good news is that, because of responsible spending, we are projecting around a 2.6 million dollar carryover into 2008. This represents almost a 7.6 million dollar budget turnaround from projections in January of 2007.

Of course your first question is: how does this affect our county jail? We have two areas of funding concern with the jail. The first is the capital improvements like the roof. The other area is the ongoing expense related to paying for new jailers and other operational expenses. Certainly the carryover can be used to fund capital improvements. Using this money for operational expenses will require a change in county law.

Not to despair! One of my next orders of business as your county budget
chairman will be to pass an ordinance that allows us to utilize a portion of
the carryover funds for public safety, which will allow us to return our jail to
2005 capacity of 1130 prisoners instead of the currently funded capacity of
880 beds. This is a huge step towards locking up more prisoners and keeping them off the streets and away from our property.

Many of you have asked me about the county treasurers donation program
called First Step which to date has raised over $16,000. As your budget
committee chairman, I continue to make funding the jail a top budget
priority in our budget process. We are committed to finding the money to
not only put a new roof on the existing jail, but to insure that funds are
available to pay jailers and support staff to keep criminals off the street.

We have started the process of reopening the closed portion of the jail.
Engineers are currently preparing the report, which will allow us to move
forward. I look forward to providing you additional updates.

Allen Kerr

CLICK HERE to see the revised 2007 budget projections.