Blaine County Commissioners heard more Tuesday from the contractor and designer selected for the new jail project.
The designers, Principle Design out of Oklahoma City, suggested the commissioners remain open minded about the location for the facility, simply because the preferred location, which once held the Watonga Cheese Factory, may not be large enough. Even if the proposed design does fit, there would be little or no room for expansion when the time comes. The property is subject to a railroad right of way to the east and street setbacks on the other sides, as well as city of Watonga utilities buildings.
The current proposal shows a 112-bed detention center with the sheriff's office housed on site. “I’ve never done a jail without the sheriff's office in the building,” said Kris Richardson of Joe D. Hall contractors. Richardson noted the commissioners are working with a $10 million budget and an 8% contingency. His take was that the cost projection be estimated at $11 million so that the contingency and fees are inclusive.
The project also has a built-in 7% inflation factor. Both the contractor and the designer as well as the sheriff are being as conservative as possible, trying to hold down the costs while balancing the needs of the county with the certainty of expansion somewhere down the road. “The costs have stabilized, but they are not going to get cheaper,” Richardson said.
A second suggested site is at the Blaine County Fairgrounds, on the northeast corner. Because the county is a party to the property, there would be no purchase costs.
“We have to be right there at the 10 (million dollars),” said Commissioner Brandon Shultz. “We can’t go over that. If we have to buy land north of town, we have to shrink the size considerably.”
Sheriff Travis Daughtery was adamant the build is not below 60 beds. “I am open minded at wherever we put it, but I don’t want to lose the bed space,” he said. The isolation cells were also a must in Daughtery’s mind. Those are used for detainees who are either ill, exposed to an illness, or pose a threat to themselves or other detainees. They feature closed air filtration systems so that illness is not spread through the heating and air conditioning.
Commissioner Traci Matli did question whether the additional capacity was necessary. “You’re going from 35 beds over here (at the current jail) to 112. That’s a lot. A lot more employees, a lot more costs, it’s a lot.”
Daughtery explained that any unused capacity could be used to house contract detainees for other counties or federal prisoners. Those are essentially rented out to the other law enforcement agencies and the money generated goes toward covering the costs of added personnel. And, he said, the beds could be filled rapidly by picking up every existing active warrant in the county. “I think we have to build for 10 years from now,” he finished.
Matli was concerned the fairgrounds location could run into water table issues and said he would rather survey the cheese factory location first before going to the expense of surveying the fairgrounds.
The designers and contractors agreed in the end that the preferred location be surveyed first, and the drawings modified to include fewer pods to control costs, but with room for expansion.
“As we get more details, we can get more precise in our cost projections,” said Ben Smith, of Principle Design.