PARIS — Officials from Franklin and Logan counties took another step this week toward building a proposed bicounty jail.
The newly formed committee, composed of each county’s sheriff, county judge, several justices of the peace and other officials, met Tuesday evening in the Logan County Courthouse in Paris.
Discussions began in January, when administrators from both counties first met to discuss the possibility of a single facility to serve the incarceration needs of bothcounties. During a March 13 meeting of the Franklin County Quorum Court, justices of the peace approved a measure establishing a county jail committee to meet with Logan County officials.
Current jail facilities in both counties are chronically overcrowded. A 2013 report from the Logan County Criminal Detention Facilities Review Committee cited the jail for multiple violations, including overcrowding, failure to separate inmates according to classification and insufficient staffing.
Logan County SheriffSteve Smith, who attended Tuesday’s meeting, said the 34-bed facility had 38 inmates as of that morning’s census. Franklin County Sheriff Anthony Boen, also in attendance, said his county’s 35-bed facility was housing 51 inmates as of Tuesday morning.
Much of Tuesday’s meeting was spent deciding on a first step in the process. Sasha Grist, assistant executivedirector of the Western Arkansas Planning & Development District in Fort Smith, said that once the committee has agreed on a site, her organization will help the committee solicit applications from architectural firms that will then be able to create proposals and cost estimates based on the committee’s criteria.
Although early and informal discussions between committee members identified Caulksville as a likely location for a new jail, other sites are still under consideration, said Logan County Justice of the Peace Mike Schluterman.
Schluterman, who was voted chairman of the bicounty committee by informal voice vote Tuesday, said that although Caulksville has an ideal geographic location, sitting almost equidistant between Ozark and Paris, the area currently has no sewer system, and would require a significant investment in infrastructure as part of the project.
Other possible sites included Branch and Paris, which already have sewer infrastructures, Schluterman said.
Franklin County Justice of the Peace Lacey Neissl said that several of her constituents had voiced concern that a jail serving two counties bore the risk of failing under the burden of political infighting.
“We all hold elected terms, so what’s going to happen if the new Franklin County sheriff doesn’t get along with the new Logan County sheriff?” Neissl asked the committee. “Who would actually be running the jail? Who would be in charge?”
Schluterman responded that the jail would ostensibly be run by an appointed administrator, rather than the sheriffs themselves.
Franklin and Logan counties are not alone in dealing with overcrowded jails, or in their pursuit of new facilities. In January, the Crawford County Quorum Court voted to put a 0.5 percent sales tax to a public vote May 20. The tax, if approved, will pay to build a 265-bed jail at an estimated cost of $15 million to $20 million. Also in January, Yell County taxpayers approved a 1 percent sales tax to build a new 75-bed facility at an estimated cost of $7 million.
Logan County Judge Gus Young, also in attendance Tuesday, said a 1 percent sales tax would yield approximately $1.8 million annually in Logan County, andapproximately $1.7 million in Franklin County.
Young also said he had been contacted by a representative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development office in Fort Smith, who told him that the proposed bicounty jail was eligible for a loan from the department through the office’s Community Facilities Loan Program. The program, according to Young and Grist, can be used to fund the construction of public buildings in rural areas.
Although the Logan County Quorum Court has already approved its committee to proceed with the process of soliciting an architect, the Franklin County Quorum Court has authorized only an initial meeting of its committee members with their Logan County counterparts. Franklin County Judge Janet Powell, who attended Tuesday’s meeting, said the Franklin County Quorum Court will vote on whether to proceed further during a scheduled meeting of the court April 10 in Charleston.
Once the Quorum Courts of each county vote to put a bond issue, sales tax or other method of paying for the proposal on a ballot for public vote, they have 70 days in which to do so. Grist said that because the process of choosing an architect alone typically takes up to three months, and the design process another three months at a minimum, it seems unlikely that the issue will appear on the general election ballot in November.
“We’d really have to move quickly, if that was the route we wanted to go,” Grist said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/27/2014