Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503070016
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Remaining in the $30 million project slated for 50 percent state funding are the city of Radford and the counties of Pulaski, Giles and Grayson.
The next step will be for them to form a regional jail authority, which can borrow money from Rural Economic and Community Development (formerly the Farmers Home Administration) for the 360-bed jail.
Before money can be secured, the authority will set up a site-selection committee to pin down the jail's location.
In its application for state funding, a regional jail committee named the Pulaski County Corporate Center as the site. But Pulaski County officials say that was only because the industrial park is owned by the county and some site had to be listed. They saw some other Pulaski County site as more likely.
Depending on the site, cost of the jail could rise. The industrial park already has utilities, but a more remote site might have to have utilities extended to it.
At one time, the site was to be in Carroll County, but that county dropped out of the project.
So did Wythe County, where officials now hope to solve the problem of their aging and overcrowded jail by having local prisoners held at a private 1,500-bed prison planned about two miles east of Wytheville. That project, by Corrections Corporation of America, is opposed by some Wythe County residents.
More recently, Tazewell County - a latecomer to the New River Valley jail project - decided to look instead at establishing a regional jail with counties closer to it.
The last participant to fall by the wayside was Floyd County, where no action on the regional jail agreement was taken last month by the Board of Supervisors.
The plan submitted to the state already had to be corrected to eliminate Tazewell County prisoners from the figures. Now the same will have to be done for Floyd.
The only other change in the plan provides for the authority board to appoint a tie-breaker, because there now will be an even number of locality representatives.
Even with Floyd's dropping out, the jail may be built with the same number of prisoner beds as planned.
``We're going to have some excess space when this jail opens up. We're going to have to have it to give ourselves room to expand,'' said Assistant Radford City Manager Bob Lloyd, regional jail committee chairman.
Until prisoners from the four localities fill the jail, though, the authority could rent space to the state or federal government and possibly lower the per-day costs for each local prisoner. The localities' per-diem costs, plus income from renting beds, will be used to repay the local share of the project's cost.
The jail committee barely met the deadline with its application to qualify for 50 percent state funding, which will not be available in the future. The most that future regional jails will get is 25 percent from the state, with new local jails drawing even less than that. In fact, the state may not participate at all in the construction of jails below a certain size.
by CNB