ROCKINGHAM — The Richmond County Board of Commissioners voted to table a proposal to spend $35,000 on a feasibility study exploring a possible regional jail with Scotland County.
Chairman Jeff Smart said he recently met with Scotland County commissioners about the idea.
“They are in the same situation as Richmond County is as a rural county with our jail situation,” said Smart.
Smart said both counties are dealing with aging, overcrowded jails that have become “very costly to us.”
“We’ve had members of our community bring this up. We’ve talked with the sheriff multiple times, of course. And we’re audited frequently by the state,” said Smart.
“The commissioners in Scotland County are very interested in partnering, maybe, to do a feasibility study for maybe, possibly, a regional jail facility down the line, somewhere,” Smart said. “I’m not saying we would go through with it, anything like that, but at least get the ball rolling for some point down the line to see if it is feasible. If not, then we’ll have to explore other options, in my opinion.”
Smart said the request would be $35,000 for Richmond County’s portion of the study, though he was unsure of the final cost.
“Sounds like, kind of a lot to me for a feasibility study… but we have to start somewhere with this. One, to see what it looks like and two, to see if there’s any monies out there for us for the future.”
County Manager Bryan Land said the study would not obligate the county to build a facility.
“No obligations. This is just to, you know, gather some data, kind of initial steps,” Land said.
Commissioner Dr. Rick Watkins asked whether the study would examine only a joint facility or also provide information on building separate county jails. Commissioner Jamie Gathings agreed that both options should be included if the study moves forward.
Land said a previous “outdated” estimate placed the cost of a new facility housing 180 to 200 detainees between $80 million and $90 million.
Finance Director Cary Garner said the county currently houses inmates in five outside facilities at a daily cost of $60 to $71 per inmate. During the last fiscal year, Richmond County spent about $825,000 on out-of-county detention. So far this fiscal year, the total has reached about $910,000.
“I firmly believe this is a judicial problem, not a Richmond County taxpayer problem,” said Commissioner Justin Dawkins.
“I would be opposed to spending any dollar of Richmond County taxpayer dollars towards this effort,” said Dawkins. “I would ask, that we ask Mr. Land to work with our legislative contacts to see if there’s funding to be able to support this.”
Commissioner Andy Grooms agreed with Dawkins about using taxpayer dollars for the study.
“It’s just not feasible,” Grooms said. “I don’t have to spend $35,000 of taxpayer money to see that already.”
Vice Chairman Jason Gainey said he learned during one meeting that two counties in North Carolina partnered to build a joint jail and received between 80% and 90% in state funding.
“I would want to speak with the representatives first,” said Gainey.
“Well, my thing is, we gotta build a jail regardless of inmate capacity of not. I mean, the jail’s outdated,” Gathings said.
Gathings said that during a visit to the jail last year, two cells would not lock.
“There’s a lot of safety concerns over there,” said Gathings. “The elevator gets worked on five times a year.”
According to Garner, the jail was last remodeled in the early 1980s.
“We’ve got to start somewhere,” said Gathings.” “We can’t just keep pushing it.”
Watkins suggested investing in the district attorney’s office to help move cases through the court system more quickly.
“because if we can get these cases heard, we can move them through the system, and then they’re not sitting in the Richmond County Jail or a place that we’re paying 60 plus dollars a day, they actually then move to state prison, so it’s not our burden.”
The board unanimously voted to table the proposal until additional information becomes available.