SPRINGDALE — The Arkansas Department of Correction will expand its work release program if the City Council approves a lease.

The council Finance Committee approved Monday sending the lease to the full council for the Dec. 11 meeting. The armory building, now vacant, would house 100 prisoners who would work in the community. The rent would be $1 a year for 25 years, according to the lease.

“What would the city receive from this?” asked Alderman Jeff Watson.

The city would receive $1 million in improvements to a building it owns, three meals a day for all city prisoners and an increase from six to nine in the number of work release participants to clean city buildings, said Wyman Morgan, city director of administration and financial services.

The contract calls for the Department of Correction to renovate two buildings at 600 W. Sunset. An 8,000-square-foot armory would be converted to house the workers in the program. An 1,800-square-foot building on the grounds would be converted to a visitor center.

The city will pay for insurance and the Department of Correction will pay maintenance and utilities. The lease would begin Jan. 1.

The workers presently clean city hall, the airport terminal, the main fire station, the police Criminal Investigation Division building and the Information Technology building. The new workers could be used at the city animal shelter and cleaning the section of the Razorback Greenway trail inside Springdale.

Workers will be available for weekend projects, Morgan said. Many of the prisoners work at area factories Monday through Friday, Morgan said.

“We’ll only be limited by transporting the prisoners,” Morgan said. “We’ve used them before for some major events, such as preparing for Featherfest and the Rodeo of the Ozarks.”

The department of correction is very strict with its workers, Morgan said. The work release participants are not allowed to smoke in public, he said.

“We lost four in one day,” Morgan said. “They were smoking together and all of them were sent back to prison.”

One prisoner who was working at the George’s factory on Kansas Street ran away recently when department officials spotted him committing an infraction. He was picked up that night and returned to prison.