ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 17, 1996 TAG: 9612170030
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY METRO
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
A revised plan to expand the future New River Valley jail will be presented to the state Board of Corrections in February.
The plan must be approved by the end of that month. The jail authority planned Friday to make its presentation at the board's January meeting, so it would have time to make any required changes in time for the deadline.
But the state board has canceled its January meeting. A board spokeswoman in Richmond said weather problems usually force January meetings to be called off or postponed anyway, and there was nothing pressing on the board's agenda.
That means the earliest that the authority can present its revised plan will be at the board's next meeting Feb. 19 in Richmond. That gives the authority only one shot at getting it right.
"That's all right. We still need January to get the submissions done," said Assistant Radford City Manager Bob Lloyd, authority chairman, after learning of there being no state board meeting in January. "It's not going to hurt us."
The plan must still be submitted to each governing body and approved by the staff of the state Board of Corrections. If the staff reviews it favorably, it should pass muster at the board level with no problem.
The localities that have worked for several years through state requirements to qualify the project for 50 percent state funding are the city of Radford and counties of Pulaski, Giles and Grayson. Bland County joined that group earlier this year.
Since then, the counties of Wythe, Carroll and Floyd have approached the authority about joining, which is why a revised plan for the jail must now be approved by the state. Those three counties had been part of earlier phases of the project, but had dropped out at various times.
Their addition now will increase the facility from 134,000 square feet to 165,000 square feet. It will be built for 360 prisoners with a support core allowing future expansion to 600 prisoners.
Bill King, with architect Thompson and Litton, told the authority members Friday that 72 maximum-security beds are planned, 144 medium security and 144 minimum security. There would be 276 spaces for males, 72 for females, and 12 for special-needs prisoners.
The jail will be built on a section of the Dublin Industrial Park. The target date for completing it is November 1998.
It is the last project of its kind to qualify for 50 percent state construction funding. The General Assembly discontinued that funding level after the project made it onto the state list.
Tazewell County expressed interest in joining the project at one time, but later withdrew in hopes of starting another regional jail project with counties closer to it. When that proved uneconomical, the county tried to join the New River Valley project but it was too late.
A number of Dublin residents living near the future jail site objected belatedly to the location. They brought their objections to Dublin Town Council after the governing body had discussed the matter and agreed to sell the site to the authority.
The authority has tried to address their concerns through a Citizens Advisory Committee. Marty Hale, one of the committee members, said some of the citizen anxiety has lessened since the authority has been working with the group on the routing of roads and other matters brought up by the citizens.
"We're going to have a jail now, and we're going to have to work together on it," she said.
In other action, the authority formed another committee to outline the salary range and benefits for a jail superintendent. Even though the state will not start paying its share of a jail superintendent's salary until six months before the jail opens, the authority thought that it should hire someone before that to oversee the project, staff hiring and other preliminaries.
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