Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993 TAG: 9302100054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
JAIL PROJECT CALLED UNAVOIDABLE
Regardless of whether Roanoke voters approve a bond issue to pay for expanding the city jail, the city must ease the overcrowding or face a court order to do so."It has to be done. We know we have to do it," Councilwoman Elizabeth Bowles said Tuesday.
"I don't think we have much choice," Councilman Howard Musser said.
City Council must decide soon whether to put the project to voters in a referendum or proceed without a vote.
The jail project could cost $7 million or more under a plan that would convert a nearby records-keeping building into a jail annex.
Musser said a bond issue almost surely will be needed to solve the jail overcrowding.
Council will meet today to consider the funding for building projects. The meeting comes two days after Roanoke Circuit Court judges told council to act quickly on jail overcrowding.
Council has several options. It could:
Put all of the capital projects, including the jail expansion, into a bond-issue package and submit them to voters in a referendum, possibly this fall.
Sell the jail bonds without a referendum, as is permitted by state law. That has been done on several projects, including construction of the city's new courthouse.
Because the city faces a potential court order to ease the jail overcrowding, council members might decide that it would be a waste of time to wait on a referendum.
"If the judges say we have to do it and the voters say no, we would still have to do it," Musser said.
Use reserve funds - which have been earmarked for economic development and other projects - to begin work quickly on the jail expansion until the bonds are sold.
If the city has a referendum on the jail project, "I think we would put a couple of other projects into the package with it," Councilman James Harvey said Tuesday.
Harvey said the state ought to pay half of the cost because nearly half the inmates are state prisoners who are waiting to be transferred to the state prison system.
The five-story jail has a rated capacity of 216 inmates, but it has housed up to 500 prisoners in recent months.
Three inmates are being kept in 7-by-10-foot cells that are designed for one person. Thirty prisoners are being housed in 515-square-foot pods designed for 10 inmates.
The state has put a moratorium on state funding for local jails until a General Assembly study committee finishes reviewing state and local jail overcrowding.
"The sad part is that this is just as much a state issue as a local issue," Harvey said. "The state needs to step up and pay its share of the cost."
Musser shares Harvey's view on the state's responsibility.
Because of the urgency of the overcrowding, Musser said, council apparently can't wait to see if the state will pay part of the cost.
"But I think we should pursue this and insist that [the state] pay for part of it even if we can't wait on them now," Musser said.
Councilman William White said the city has about $2 million in reserve funds that it apparently could use for the jail project if this becomes necessary.
"We have some money that we could use in an emergency," White said, but the city will need more funds for a long-range solution to the jail overcrowding.
If the overcrowding becomes an emergency, Harvey said, council might sell bonds without a referendum.
In a letter to council, Chief Judge Roy B. Willett said Sheriff Alvin Hudson has made clear the potential danger of the overcrowding to the jail staff, inmates and public.
"We all realize that neither the governing body nor the judiciary can long countenance such a state of affairs," Willett said.
Because of the overcrowding, Willett said, the jail apparently violates fire, health and safety regulations.
Mayor David Bowers said he considers the letter to be the final step before the judges direct council to deal with the problem.
For months, Hudson has been saying the city must ease the overcrowding to help prevent fights or riots by inmates.
He also is worried that inmates might file a class-action lawsuit over conditions caused by overcrowding.