Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Several Atlanta corrections officers and others made impassioned pleas Wednesday to Mayor Kasim Reed to keep their jobs as the city considers a lease-purchase deal with Fulton County for its detention center.
Fulton’s jail is overcrowded and it needs more space. Fulton County would use at least 300 of the more than 1,000 beds in the Atlanta jail for county inmates, city officials said. Fulton would interview Atlanta’s 298 corrections officers for guards, but city officials said there’s no guarantee how many of them would be hired.
“How do 300 inmates get a guarantee and 300 officers don’t get a guarantee?” corrections Officer Ricardo Santos asked Reed during three hours of tense discussions at the City Council’s Finance/Executive Committee meeting.
The city is interested in the deal because Reed says Atlanta could save at least $12.5 million a year over the course of the agreement. Santos and others accused city leaders of intentionally mismanaging the detention center in recent years to force Atlanta out of the jail business. They urged the city to conduct an audit or research ways to study the jail’s revenue options.
The mayor noted afterward that the city could close the detention center or send its inmates to other jails, but he believes the best option is still the lease-purchase deal. Reed said he will discuss job security with Fulton leaders as part of the final negotiations of the deal.
“It’s very hard to hear those things, but I am trying to make sure there is as little [job] loss as we possibly can,” Reed told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Some council members said they want to move cautiously on the agreement because of deals such as the unresolved, five-year effort to sell City Hall East to a developer. Reed, who took office in January, is trying to sell City Hall East to a revamped group of developers.
Reed is working on a proposed budget that he said currently has a $48 million shortfall. He has warned some jobs may be eliminated if the city doesn’t get the two deals done.
The City Council is scheduled to vote on the jail deal at its April 19 meeting.
Copyright 2010 Atlanta Journal-Constitution