Lexington City Council inaction
keeps jail expansion alive
 |
Local governments are asking the state for $15 million, enough to cover about half the cost of expanding the Rockbridge Regional Jail. |
When the topic of jail expansion came before the Lexington City Council at its Mar. 19 meeting, all six council members sat silently. No one made a motion. No one had to.
Without a vote, the council let stand a 2007 resolution to apply for state funding for an estimated $30 million expansion of the Rockbridge Regional Jail, which serves Rockbridge County, Lexington and Buena Vista. The group’s silent endorsement came after a work session discussing the regional jail prior to the meeting on the same day.
“Not taking action is action,” Council Member Frank Friedman told the other council members at the work session. They agreed to continue with a request for state funding for an estimated $15 million, half the price of the expansion. The potential expansion would address inmate overcrowding, an issue that has affected the jail for about four years.
It’s the latest development in a debate that began in September 2007 when Lexington, Rockbridge County and the towns of Glasgow and Goshen passed concurrent resolutions that asked the state to pay for half of the jail expansion’s cost. At that time, the Buena Vista City Council rejected the resolution.
Since then, Buena Vista and county officials have changed their minds. Buena Vista has unanimously approved the resolution. But the county supervisors voted 3-2 two weeks ago not to reaffirm the original resolution.
Several county supervisors expressed concerns about the cost of the project and the chances of receiving money from the state.
“We just haven’t explored [the alternatives], and we wanted to basically send that message,” said supervisors Chair Hunt Riegel.
Even without unanimous support from their governing bodies, all three localities will go forward with their request for money from the Virginia General Assembly.
But officials across the board were careful to note that applying for money from the state, if it is still available, would not commit anyone to the expansion.
With the recent construction of a new $30 million courthouse, shared by the county and Lexington, fresh in their minds, officials from all three jurisdictions are keeping a close eye on next year’s spending. Lexington City Council member Bob Lera said he was particularly skeptical about investing in a multimillion-dollar project without looking at the alternatives.
“There’s got to be better ways to spend money, particularly with this economy,” Lera said. Lera and other Lexington City Council members said they hope to tour the jail and discover exactly what needs to be done.
Since it opened in 1988, the Rockbridge Regional Jail has seen a dramatic increase in the number of inmates it must house each day. The 56-bed jail can hold about 100 inmates when rooms are double-bunked. Today, the average number of inmates housed per day is about 95.
Jail officials are worried that if an expansion doesn’t happen soon, overcrowding will have drastic effects on the localities. If the jail were to reach capacity, inmates would have to be sent to jails in other regions for a fee.
Lexington City Manager Jon Ellestad said an expansion might not only prevent extra costs in the future, but could also allow the Rockbridge area to make money by housing prisoners from surrounding areas. That happened for several years after the jail opened, before the number of local prisoners spiked. Ellestad thinks an expanded jail could take in as much as $50 per day per inmate from other jurisdictions.
But Ellestad also said he thinks there is a general trend on the state level toward reducing money for corrections institutions because of budget concerns.
“I think it’s safe to say the day of getting 50 percent reimbursement for a regional jail is gone,” he said. Still, he urged the council to apply for money from the state in the hopes that they might get at least one fourth of the cost of the expansion.
Whatever the level of support from the state, he said the localities would still have to grapple with their budgets to pay the cost.
“No matter what we do … we’re going to have to issue debt to do it.”
Produced by
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journalism students.
Lead Supervisors:
Prof. Brian
Richardson
Prof. Indira Somani
Editing supervisor:
Prof. Lisa Tracy
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd