ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on April 16, 1996.
Clarification
The proposed New River Valley jail has been approved for 50 percent
state funding but will be among the final such projects built before a
state moratorium goes into effect. A headline in Saturday's paper could
have implied the jail project had been postponed.
The New River Valley Regional Jail Authority learned Friday that its planned 240-bed facility near Dublin will be among the last jails in Virginia to be built under a state-assisted program.
The General Assembly this winter ordered the state Compensation Board not to commit additional funds for any local or regional jail construction, renovation or expansion not approved before this year.
"What that means is that there'll be no more jail projects, regional or otherwise, during this moratorium," said Assistant Radford City Manager Bob Lloyd, authority chairman.
The legislation allows exceptions, but only if the additional state funding can be shown as saving the state money in the long run.
New legislation allows additional localities to join regional jail projects that, like the New River project, already have been approved for 50 percent state construction funding. But the state Department of Corrections first would have to approve a jail authority's request to add more participants.
Current participating localities are Radford and Pulaski, Giles and Grayson counties.
Bland County has formed a committee to look at the regional jail concept and make a recommendation to its Board of Supervisors. Bland County Administrator Gary Cutlip has sent a list of questions to Lloyd about the project.
Wythe County dropped out of the New River project several years ago. Its Board of Supervisors also has appointed a committee to look at alternatives for its 75-year-old overcrowded jail, which eventually will have to be expanded or replaced.
Seventeen jail projects in Virginia had been approved before the legislative cutoff. "When we bid this project, the market's going to be saturated," said Bill King, with Thompson & Litton, the architectural and engineering firm that has been working on the New River project.
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