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| New Allegan County Jail: $17.7 million |
| By allegannews.com - Ryan Lewis |
| Published: 08/23/2011 |
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At a cost of $17.7 million, the proposed new Allegan County Jail will house a maximum of 280 inmates. The Allegan County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Thursday, Aug. 11, to pursue that target limit on the price of the proposed jail when they receive bids in November or December on the long-discussed project. If commissioners accept bids, 18 to 24 months of construction would retrofit the former Haworth seating plant at 640 River St. in Allegan into a new jail and sheriff’s administration complex. Until last week, county administration had advised commissioners not to aim for a project more expensive than $16.5 million. On Aug. 11, county administrator Rob Sarro said he and county finance director David Van de Roovaart recommended, after “extensive review of all county financials,” that to pay for the project the county could borrow as much as $13.5 million and spend up to $4.2 million from various reserve funds. The $13.5 million debt could be paid off using the approximately $1 million in annual revenue generated by the county’s delinquent tax revolving fund, a strategy in both of the project’s previous funding efforts. In June, commissioners asked the architects to prepare estimates for costs of various portions of the jail that could be bid separately and eliminated from the project. Without any of those alternates, the new jail’s cost dropped to $16.5 million to house 202 inmates in rated beds. At $18.6 million, including many of the alternates, the new jail could house as many as 352 inmates. Jail administrator Lt. Deb Marculis said the jail design at $17.7 million would have much less liability than the least expensive option, which eliminated an inmate worker dormitory, one section of cells and a day room. Losing that space, she said, would make it difficult to separate various classifications of inmates (male and female, ill and healthy, violent and non-violent, etc.). “Without the dorm or Pod A, I’ve been sitting down for hours just trying to figure out how we’d separate the male-female space,” Marculis said. The worker dorm would also completely segregate the inmates who normally circulate through the community—and have the access and means to smuggle in contraband to more restricted inmates. At $17.7 million, the project would also replace the roof above the detention areas and administrative offices at an estimated cost of $238,554. Read More. |
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