Blaine County wants to build a new jail. The old jail is overcrowded and no longer meets state requirements. It has been limping along for a good while and everyone knows it needs to be replaced.
The county has funds ratholed for the project. It has a piece of property – the old site of the Watonga Cheese Factory. What it hasn’t come up with is a consensus of what the needs and wants are.
“There are no bars, no keys, in a modern jail,” said Ben Smith, an architect at Principle Design.
Principle is a design firm out of Norman that specializes in jails and prisons. “It’s all electronic with a low jailer count and a central control system. It controls the locks and cameras.”
New jail standards require separate booking and medical isolation areas. The medical isolation must have separate ventilation systems. New facilities include a commercial kitchen, laundry and video visitation.
Video visits, said Sheriff Travis Daughtery, eliminate the chance of contraband being slipped to a detainee.
One of the sets of schematics – similar to a site plan, but less elaborate – shows the new facility on the cheese factory lot but no plans for offices for law enforcement. Daughtery said, “It was there but we chopped it to keep it in budget.”
“We need more office space so the sheriff can be in that building,” said Commissioner Brandon Schultz. “We need it to make it the sheriff’s office, not just the Blaine County Jail.” He also pointed out that the property extends all the way to the railroad tracks.
The first schematics show a 62-bed, 10,000 sq. ft. building with a mezzanine. A second set shows about 80 beds and 15,000 sq. ft., also in a mezzanine configuration. It has a sheriff’s office and squad room on site as well, a requirement in Daughtery’s eyes.
“We have to get openminded on this,” he said. “When you do new construction, inmate rights go up. We have to have officers on site to stop fights,” he added.
Kris Richardson, with Joe D. Hall Elk City, said at this point the various people involved in the project were making a lot of assumptions. Hall will serve as the construction manager for the project.
“I know you don’t want to spend crazy money. There will be four or five budgets during this project, and they typically go down. We will fit your priorities to the budget. We are working with a guesstimate of $11 million, but we need parameters,” Richardson said.
Schultz and new commissioner Darryl Hicks said the sheriff’s offices need to be on the jail site.
In the end, Smith said he would create a hybridized version of the two plans and make some adjustments, with priorities set on law enforcement being housed at the new building and enough beds so that it is adequate for current needs and expandable for future needs. The added bed spaces will allow Blaine County tolease space to other law enforcement agencies which will help meet the salaries of the jailers.
Smith will return with suggestions on or around the middle of February.