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| Officials prepare to ink JDC agreement |
| By trib.com |
| Published: 01/28/2010 |
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By TOM MORTON - Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Thursday, January 28, 2010 12:00 am In a few days, Natrona County and state officials will have signed the agreement to release up to $8 million of federal stimulus money for a new juvenile detention center, they said Wednesday. "I think the governor is anxious to see that old facility replaced," said Judge Gary Hartman, Gov. Dave Freudenthal's juvenile justice advisor, during a conference call. The call with county commissioners, District Attorney Mike Blonigen, Sheriff Mark Benton, Hartman and others from the state resolved issues ranging from minor wording to the major headaches of receiving federal funding. The $8 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will be matched by $3 million committed by the county -- including optional 1-cent sales tax revenues -- to begin this summer building a $11 million, 24-bed, 28,000-square-foot facility next to the adult jail on Bruce Lane. It will replace the juvenile detention center on the third floor of the Hall of Justice, 201 N. David St., which a federal court declared unfit for adult inmates in the mid-1990s. The center has been plagued by security, safety, health and other issues since the county began incarcerating youth there. While the county could not have paid for a new center without the help of the stimulus funding funneled from the U.S. Department of Education through the governor's office, commissioners said Tuesday the agreement had a few problems. Matt Keating took offense about a requirement of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention urging the county to "avoid disproportionate minority contact," which implied the county had not fairly treated minority detainees, he said. On Wednesday, Hartman said he didn't write that as well as he could have, and substituted language requiring the county to maintain records of minority youth. Blonigen and the commissioners accepted that change. They also won approval from state officials changing language regarding the Prison Rape Elimination Reform Act that Blonigen said could be too open to interpretation. On the other hand, some of the requirements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act left no room for interpretation at all. The ARRA requires recipients of the stimulus money to "buy American," which could add costs to projects, county and state officials said. "It's pretty onerous," Commission Chairman Rob Hendry said. Jim Chaput of the state's construction management office said the reporting requirements about buying American fall on the contractors. If contractors cannot find American-made products and equipment, they can apply for waivers, but the additional paperwork may not be worth it, said Lynne Boomgaarden, director of the Office of State Lands and Investments. Read More. |
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