By Andrea Lorenz
Austin American-Statesman
SAN MARCOS, Texas — After an April inspection found the Hays County Jail in violation of state standards, Sheriff Tommy Ratliff told county commissioners something they had already heard from his predecessor: The county needs a new jail.
Officials plan to address the safety concerns discovered during the inspection, which was requested by Ratliff, but those fixes have joined a growing list of county needs. Plans to build a county government office center include a new justice center, with space for the district attorney’s office and courts - but no new jail. And commissioners don’t agree on how to address the challenge.
The Commission on Jail Standards, the state agency that oversees county jails, cited the Hays County facility for several health and safety violations, including mold in food freezers, a leaky roof and rust and deterioration between cells that allow inmates to pass contraband.
Ratliff said the county should have a rough estimate in two weeks of how much repairs to the 20-year-old building would cost .
“I think it’s going to be a lot more than we even want to talk about,” he said.
In addition to the issues raised in the inspection, Ratliff said, the jail does not have enough beds. Hays County gives $250,000 to $300,000 a year to other counties to house prisoners in their jails.
The sheriff said Hays County Jail can hold 362 beds at capacity. Ratliff said, as of Tuesday, 12 prisoners were being held off-site, but he did not have an exact count of the inmates in the Hays County Jail at the time.
Ratliff is asking for a facility that could eventually house 600 to 900 prisoners within 20 years through building add-ons.
The latest cost estimates for constructing a new government center came in at $115 million, which commissioners say they plan to whittle down to an amount that has not been specified.
Meanwhile, the county has committed to spending $163 million in voter-approved bond money on roads and parks.
Planning the center has cost the county $2.5 million. An architectural firm is exploring whether the jail could be expanded, but county officials say that it is too early to guess how much that could cost.
County Judge Liz Sumter said she would like to come up with a plan for building a justice center and jail in one location and a government center with county offices in another.
However, Commissioner Jeff Barton said that it would be counterproductive to change the county’s existing plans for the government and justice center and that he would prefer that discussions start with the possibility of adding on to the existing jail.
“Most of us want to keep the jail where it is today,” Commissioner Will Conley said.
Hays County District Attorney Sherri Tibbe , who is on the building committee for the government center, said the county’s current justice center, located for the past 13 years in a former grocery store, is too small and lacks security features such as separate entrances for prisoners.
Tibbe said she is concerned that restarting the planning process would set back the projected finish date, which is in 2011.
“To everybody that’s in this justice center right now, with the working conditions we’ve tolerated, that’s really bad for us,” she said.
Tibbe said she would do what she could to help bring prisoner numbers down, and Ratliff said his office’s new program to cite and release offenders for some Class B misdemeanors such as criminal mischief is aimed at doing just that.
“Those kinds of things help,” Ratliff said. “The problem is (the jail) is so old. Not only is it old and falling apart, in many respects it’s being a hazard to our people and our inmates.”
Copyright 2009 The Austin American-Statesman