By Keith Gushard
The Meadville Tribune
SAEGERTOWN — Crawford County Prison Board is backing a plan to hire six more full-time corrections officers for the county jail in Saegertown.
The proposal would add two more full-time guards per shift, according to Ken Saulsbery, the jail’s deputy warden. Saulsbery presented the proposal at Thursday’s meeting of the Prison Board at the jail. The additional full-time manpower is needed to help cover shifts around the clock and the pool of per diem employees has dwindled to six, Saulsbery said.
The Prison Board gave unanimous approval to the proposal by a consensus of 6-0 with board member Jack Lynch absent from Thursday’s meeting. Creating the new positions will require formal action by the Crawford County Board of Commissioners. The county’s three commissioners, Lynch, Francis Weiderspahn Jr. and C. Sherman Allen, are members of the Prison Board.
Saulsbery told the Prison Board the per diem, or daily employee pool, has dropped to six on the call list. That’s down from as many as 15 earlier this year. The per diem employees are called in to fill in for full-time employees who are off, ill or in training.
“Just because they’re on the list doesn’t mean they’re available,” Saulsbery said of the per diem employees. The per diems called may not be able to work a shift if called on short notice, he said.
“It makes scheduling more difficult,” Saulsbery said of the situation. “There is no easy fix.”
Prison Board members Sheriff Nick Hoke and Crawford County Court of Common Pleas Judge John Spataro both voiced support for the additional positions, saying it would help with staff continuity. Additional staffing and training were recommendations in an independent study of the jail done in 2013 by representatives of the National Institute of Corrections (NIC).
The study was compiled following a two-day visit to the jail in March 2013 by NIC representatives who interviewed staff, inmates, Prison Board members and the public. The NIC, an agency within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, has no official jurisdiction over county jails, so its investigators make recommendations, not mandates.
Warden Tim Lewis told the board that the jail has money within its budget to fund the proposed six corrections officer positions for the remainder of 2015. The new positions would have to be factored into the jail’s 2016 budget, he said.
Per diem corrections officers make $10 per hour with no benefits. Full-time corrections officers start at $15.36 per hour for a 40-hour week plus benefits at an additional cost of about $12,000 per year, according to the county finance department. The six full-time positions, if filled, would cost the jail a total of approximately $66,000 for the fourth quarter of 2015, according Mark Lessig, county administrator.
Lewis said he expects to approach county commissioners with the recommendation of additional staffing in September.
“The sooner, the better,” Lewis said following the meeting, adding he hoped to get approval to have the positions start Oct. 1.
Due to the county’s classification, the state requires the Prison Board to be comprised of the county’s three commissioners, treasurer, sheriff, district attorney and a county judge. Members of the Crawford County Prison Board are Weiderspahn, Lynch, Allen, Hoke, Spataro, Treasurer Christine Krzysiak and District Attorney Francis Schultz.