Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9309030010
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
The Wythe County Board of Supervisors has voted formally not to take part in any further studies involving the regional jail.
The Pulaski County board has not officially withdrawn, but has not approved its share of funding for the study, either. Meanwhile, the board is making its own study to see whether it would be better off with its own jail or a regional one.
That leaves the city of Radford and counties of Giles, Floyd, Carroll and Grayson. Regional jail committee representatives from those localities agreed last week to look at proposals from five firms for getting the data required for state participation.
The state will pay half the construction costs of regional jails for which studies show a need, but only if all the preliminary work is done by March. The next round of funding is 1996, when the state's participation drops to 25 percent. The statistical data would have to be gathered all over again.
Bob Cooper of the Department of Corrections noted that Pulaski and Wythe jails account for 306 of the 359 prisoner beds in the entire region.
"And that's a lot," Cooper said. He said the loss of those localities is "not the death knell, but a big consideration" on whether the project should be continued.
"Plus there's a big vacuum. Geographically, there's a hole," said Floyd County Administrator Randy Arno. "It diminishes the economies of scale."
On the other hand, Cooper said, it would also diminish the size of the jail by 200 beds, which would mean 100 fewer the state would have to pay for.
Pulaski's jail has space for 145 prisoners. Wythe has space for 61. Carroll's jail is built for 63 prisoners; Giles, 50; Grayson, 32; Radford, 30, and Floyd, 17.
Of course, all the jails have had to accommodate many more prisoners than their stated capacity, one reason the regional jail is being considered.
"Essentially, you miss the centerpiece out of it," said Dave Rundgren, executive director of the New River Valley Planning District Commission, which did an earlier study on the costs and savings through a regional jail.
"I think it's still going to come out looking pretty good," he said, even without those two major counties. "The feature that we've got to look at is cost of transportation . . . But I think those costs will still balance out."
With the participants still shifting, the location of any regional jail is far from decided. Pulaski County officials say they are worried about the costs of transporting prisoners to and from the regional jail, and the loss of local prisoners to provide labor on work-release programs.
A regional jail actually could provide more work-release labor, Rundgren said. "In essence, you have a larger pool to draw from."
Transportation, said Radford Assistant City Manager Bob Lloyd, "is the regional jail's responsibility."
But the regional jail committee is not in a position to address any of these concerns. That would be done by a jail authority, made up of representatives from the participating localities.
As for the loss of Wythe and potential loss of Pulaski, Lloyd said, "I don't really know what this means to the rest of us, except that it diminishes our numbers. It doesn't change the need."
by CNB