ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610210015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-26 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
WYTHEVILLE - Wythe County has until Nov.1 to decide whether it wants to be part of the New River Valley Regional Jail project.
The regional jail authority set the deadline, the county Board of Supervisors learned last week.
The county commissioned a $15,000 study to help its board decide whether to join the regional jail, to be built in Pulaski County, or build its own jail to replace the crowded 70-year-old jail.
The board will meet at 1 p.m. Oct.28 to make a decision. It will invite regional jail authority representatives to answer questions about that project, which includes Pulaski, Giles, Grayson and Bland counties and the city of Radford.
Wythe Sheriff Wayne Pike has said a regional jail will cause prisoner transportation problems. It also will mean job losses for Wythe jail staff members. The authority has said it will give employees from local sheriffs' offices the first opportunity to be on the regional jail staff at Dublin, but they must meet corrections officer requirements.
"Running the jail is not a fun job, and it's not an easy job, and it's 24 hours a day," Pike said, but "when you have an institution outside the county to deal with, you're at their mercy."
Pike said that has proved true in transporting juveniles to the regional detention facility at Christiansburg. He said a deputy recently transported a female juvenile there. When they arrived, he said, she declared herself pregnant and the facility would not accept her without a medical examination.
Rather than pay the cost of a late night visit to the emergency room, Pike had the juvenile returned home. But her home was empty, and the deputy had to spend still more time seeking a relative to take custody of her until her hearing.
Wythe County Administrator Cellell Dalton said preliminary figures from the regional jail authority indicate that it will cost Wythe County $75,000 to buy into the project at this stage. It also would have to pay attorney's fees of about $1,200 and engineering fees of about $10,000 to have the regional jail agreement changed and planning expanded.
Dalton said the study showed that expanding the existing jail to 50 beds would cost $4.1 million, and to expand it to accommodate projected prisoner figures would cost $5.3 million.
Estimates to build a jail at the county industrial park are $4.6 million for 50 beds and $5.8 million for expansion. Estimates to build a jail in the area of the county courthouse are $4.48 million to $4.7 million for 50 beds and $5.5 million to $6.05 million for expansion, depending on location.
Former county administrator Billy Branson told the Board of Supervisors last week that the same people who opposed a private prison in Wythe County in recent years are now saying it is better to rent than own their jail. "If that's true, why don't the rich landowners of Wythe County sell their land and rent?" he said.
Former supervisor Olin Armentrout, who agreed that his support of a private prison was a factor in his defeat for re-election, said Wythe County had been interested in a regional jail when it appeared that it might be built in the county near Fort Chiswell. Wythe pulled out of the regional jail study when the geographical focus moved east, he said.
"And for anybody not central to it, there's got to be a lot of costs involved," he said. "I have found almost no persons who are interested in joining this regional jail, mainly because we don't know what it's about."
Branson and Armentrout said the group favoring the regional jail is using it to get at the sheriff. Two members of that group told the supervisors that is not the issue and that Pike and his staff are doing a good job.
Supervisor Bucky Sharitz said the board should change its priorities and worry about funding school building improvements before tackling a jail project. "I think we need to put our schools ahead of our jail," he said.
Supervisor Mark Munsey, who has been serving on a jail study committee for months, said he had put time, energy and money into studying the situation and the board had paid $15,000 for a jail study. "I feel that, with the state of where we are, to arbitrarily and capriciously end it then I think we're fooling ourselves."
The board agreed on the special Oct.28 meeting instead.
Supervisors invited to view school needs
WYTHEVILLE - Tours of Wythe County schools are planned starting Wednesday to see what improvements are needed in the coming century.
The county School Board hired the Blacksburg consulting firm Mills, Oliver & Webb to make an architectural study of facilities. Superintendent James Vaught told the county Board of Supervisors last week that the study was completed earlier this year and reviewed by the School Board.
He invited the supervisors to accompany school officials on tours of buildings in the weeks ahead. New technological requirements also will be necessary in future school buildings, he said. "The classrooms of tomorrow will not look like the classrooms that you and I attended."
Bondurant named to board
EMORY - Kenneth K. Bondurant, president of Bondurant Realty Corp. in Radford, is among six members named to the Emory & Henry College Board of Trustees.
He and the other members were nominated last spring and elected this fall.
Community services costs shifted
WYTHEVILLE - The executive director of the Mount Rogers Community Services Board has warned Wythe County officials to watch out for "back-door mandates" from the state that could cost localities.
Wally Cline told Wythe County Board of Supervisors last week that, in the 1986 fiscal year, the state provided 48 percent of the funding for his agency's services in the region to the poor. Local and federal governments each provided about 5 percent, with the rest coming from such sources as contract fees.
In the 1996 fiscal year, he said, the state is providing 26 percent, federal government 8 percent, and localities 3 percent. Fees and contract sales fund more than half of the agency's programs, he said.
"Functionally, what this means to us is that we have much less choice in terms of the services we provide," he said. He said the agency must rely more heavily on services to clients where Medicaid reimbursements can be made instead of on who needs the services most.
Cline said there will be a public hearing at 7 p.m. Oct.30 in Grayson Hall Commons at Wytheville Community College to hear what services the public wants.
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