CLARKESVILLE — Habersham County leaders agree a new jail is imperative, and that they want the public to approve the financing for the facility.
“My motion is to call for a voter-approved bond referendum with a 30-year amortization,” Commission Chairman Stacy Hall said during Monday night’s meeting. “I am not going to include a dollar amount on that because I do not feel that we have yet determined the appropriate size of the jail.”
While no amount has been set yet for the project, a study performed recently placed the cost of a new, expandable jail adjacent to the current detention center in Clarkesville at some $34 million.
Hall said he is not comfortable yet with that figure and wants the county to continue evaluating future needs and to examine possible areas of value engineering.
“For now, I do think it’s appropriate that we go ahead and make a decision on how we’re going to pay for this jail,” Hall said.
Commissioner Natalie Crawford seconded the motion, with all five commissioners voting in favor.
Last year, Habersham County paid $450,000 in daily boarding fees to house inmates at other detention centers across North Georgia.
Sheriff Joey Terrell said this year’s inmate boarding fees will far exceed that amount, and those housing figures don’t include the cost of transport officers and fuel usage.
That’s because the Habersham County Detention Center was originally designed with a rated capacity of 130 inmate beds, but currently has an average population between 180 and 240 total inmates.
“The primary goal of the sheriff’s office is to house its growing inmate population safely, constitutionally and economically,” according to the executive summary from Precision Planning Inc., the jail architectural firm that has built some 20 jails.
The Georgia Sheriffs’ Association Jail Services Division provided preliminary recommended inmate beds at 350-400 total beds to allow for classification. Any facility constructed should include the recommended classification breakdowns of 12 percent maximum security, 40 percent medium security, 30 percent minimum security, and 18 percent female.
During Monday night’s commission meeting, resident Bob Guthrie urged commissioners to look closer at numbers before determining the size jail to build, saying recent trends could mean the facility needs to be larger than discussed, if they’re correct.
Carl Blackburn, immediate past chairman of the Habersham County Republican Party, urged commissioners not to create an authority to seek financing for a new jail, but instead to fund the jail either through a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax or, alternately, through a public referendum.
“I want to commit to the public that I take this jail situation very, very seriously,” Hall told those in attendance. “It is a lot of your money, and I want you to know that I recognize that and I commit to you that I’m doing — and I believe all of us are — doing everything possible to make sure we make the right decision for our community, and I’ll just leave it at that.”
No possible date was given for a referendum.
