TAX INCREASE AMONG OPTIONS FOR JAIL FUNDS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 11, 1993                   TAG: 9302110225
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
TAX INCREASE AMONG OPTIONS FOR JAIL FUNDS
A tax increase might be required to pay for expanding Roanoke's jail and juvenile detention home to ease overcrowding.
The possibility of higher taxes arose Wednesday as City Council reviewed the city's building and capital-improvement projects.
Council faces a choice: raise taxes now to pay for the jail and detention home, or boost them next year for a bond issue for schools, bridges, storm drains and other projects.
City Manager Bob Herbert said he won't recommend any increase in real estate and personal property taxes. But he told council that the city needs a new "revenue source" to finance the jail and detention home expansions.
The two projects will cost $10 million - $7 million for the jail and $3 million for the detention home. The city is hoping the state will pay approximately $3.2 million, leaving the city's share at $6.8 million.
Acting Finance Director James Grisso said the city's debt service payments on earlier bond issues will decrease to $668,000 next year.
This will free money for a new bond issue of approximately $7 million - enough to pay the city's share of the jail and detention home. It costs the city about $95,000 a year to repay each $1 million in bonds, Grisso said.
Grisso said council must make the "policy decision" on how the money will be spent.
But Herbert warned council that it would not have any funds to repay a bond issue for other projects if it uses the $668,000 for the jail and detention home.
The city has a list of other high-priority projects - bridge replacements, sidewalks and sewer lines - that will cost more than $20 million.
If council finances the expansions of the jail and juvenile detention home with the money freed by the lower debt payments, Herbert said, it might have to wait several years until it could afford the bonds for the other projects.
Council could raise taxes to repay bonds for these projects, but that is considered unlikely.
If council finds a new revenue source for the jail and juvenile detention home, Herbert said, a bond referendum could be held on the other projects in the fall of 1994.
But Councilman Howard Musser said he is inclined to use the $668,000 to finance the jail and detention home. "We have got to do them, whatever we do on the funding issue. . . . I think we ought to take one thing at a time and use the money that we will have to do what we know we have to do."
Council members delayed a decision until Herbert makes a recommendation in a few weeks.
Herbert thinks it would be a waste of time to hold a referendum on the jail and detention home.
In a letter this week, Roanoke Circuit Court judges put council on notice that it must ease the overcrowding quickly.
Chief Judge Roy B. Willett said Sheriff Alvin Hudson has made clear the potential danger of the overcrowding.
Because of overcrowding, the jail apparently violates fire, health and safety regulations, Willett said. The juvenile detention home is also overcrowded, housing 30 youngsters in a facility designed for 20.
Hudson told council that the number of jail inmates is increasing by 12 percent a year. The five-story jail has a rated capacity of 216 inmates, but it has housed up to 500.
Under the plan for the jail expansion, two adjacent buildings on Campbell Avenue will be acquired and converted.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB