The cost of constructing a new jail facility was the topic of a meeting of the Grundy County Law Enforcement Committee held Monday evening at the courthouse.
This website brought to you in part by the following sponsor:
The cost of constructing a new jail facility was the topic of a meeting of the Grundy County Law Enforcement Committee held Monday evening at the courthouse.
According to county commissioners Bud Cox and Gene Wyant, the committee met with Ken West of ArchitectsWest, who presented cost estimates for three different proposed facilities. West said a 36-bed county/city facility was estimated to cost $3.586 million, while a 20-bed county/city facility was estimated at $2.986 million. The third option, a 16-bed county-only facility was estimated at $2.578 million. None of the cost estimates includes furnishings, electronic equipment or the cost of acquiring land.
Cox and Wyant said the plans for the two smaller facilities both have options for expansion, with the cost of adding space for the city police station to the smallest option listed at $408,000 and the cost of adding another cell block listed at $600,000. No decisions were made Monday night as to which option would be best for the county to pursue, but the commissioners said a random telephone survey had been conducted that indicated 80 percent of the respondents felt the facility, if constructed, should be a joint project between the county and the city of Trenton.
Cox and Wyant said the question now is how much would the payments be if a facility was constructed. Greg Bricker of George K. Baum and Co. was contacted this morning and will bring those figures to a meeting next Tuesday. Also discussed was the location of a facility and while commissioners have sought to purchase property on Main Street owned by Jim McCarty (the former Nisbeth-Seidel property), a firm price has never been agreed upon and the commission is now in the process of contacting the property owners behind that building to see if a price can be negotiated. Commissioners said that while the McCarty property would be its first choice for a location, the facility could be constructed on the east end of that block if the price was more in line with what the county can afford.
Cost remains a major issue in this project, according to Cox and Wyant, who said they want to be sure the county can afford to operate the facility if and when it is constructed. Hopefully, they said, Bricker will be able to shed some light on the actual operating cost and how much the county would have to bring in through a sales tax in order to open and operate the jail building.
The committee will meet again Tuesday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. to continue its discussion. If a tax is to be placed on the February ballot, that decision must be made by Nov. 30, however Cox and Wyant said they feel that a decision will be made on Tuesday night.