Commissioners host meetings on jail project

Yahoo

13-02-2025

Feb. 13—JEFFERSON — The Ashtabula County Board of Commissioners hosted a pair of public meetings on proposed plans for an expanded Ashtabula County Jail Wednesday.
The first of two meetings Wednesday was well-attended, with nearly every seat in the commissioners' conference room filled.
J.P Ducro, president of the commissioners, started the event by thanking everyone for attending.
Commissioner Casey Kozlowski said the jail project has significant public interest.
Commissioner Kathryn Whittington said the purpose of the meetings was full transparency.
Sheriff William Niemi said the current jail does not meet the county's needs.
"I have an obligation to keep my community and the county safe, and I can't do that properly with the current facility that we have," he said. "So this is something that had to be addressed a long time ago, and I'm glad the county commissioners are listening to me."
Ducro said while the jail may look great on the outside, the inside is a completely different story.
"It's kind of become a money pit," he said. "We've put hundreds of thousands of dollars into just the elevator repairs over the course of the last few years."
How corrections was addressed 50 years ago is completely different from today, Ducro said.
"Because it's a multi-story facility, it's operationally inefficient, and it's undersized to meet the needs of today's incarceration," he said.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the jail housed as many as 170 inmates. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections recently lowered the maximum number of inmates to 98, Ducro said.
"It's housing half as many people, and that's all we're allowed to house by law," Ducro said.
The county has contracted with the Geauga County Jail to house inmates there.
The jail is not equipped to deal with many complex issues, including inmates who are detoxing or on suicide watch, Ducro said.
"Because of the size of the jail, also, we have one room in our current facility that is used for GED classes, for parenting classes, for budgeting classes, for religious, faith-based observation, for Alcoholics Anonymous or other programs like that," Durco said.
There are many different programs in the community that exist, but there is not room in the jail to accommodate them, he said.
"We're housing gang members, murderers, you name it, they're in our county jail," Niemi said. "And we have to separate people, by law, we can't have them all in one room."
He suggested adding on to the current facility to the commissioners.
"I don't need anything fancy, I need a jail and I need space to house people, that's all I need," Niemi said. "I don't need anything like a Taj Mahal, I don't need that."
He said people who steal are given summons, and some have received five or 10 for minor crimes and do not show up to their court dates.
"We're dealing with a whole different type of individual now than we did 10 years ago," Niemi said.
He said there are people who have been turned away four or five times when trying to serve their time.
The Geauga County Sheriff cut the county a break with the deal to house inmates, which has helped them out, but it is not a permanent solution, Niemi said.
"Our situation is dire," he said. "So I suggested we add on to our current footprint, it saves the county money, and it gives us a 209-bed facility."
The current booking area will have to be modified, he said.
Niemi said adding onto the current facility is the cheaper route, and easier to do.
Whittington said this is not a new issue, and the commissioners have been working on it for several years.
In 2021, the commissioners put a sales tax increase on the ballot in order to pay for the construction of a new jail north of Jefferson. Voters rejected the proposal.
Whittington said the commissioners started saving money and looking at where they could reduce things after voters rejected the proposal.
The new plan would be an addition on the north side of the current facility, which would cover the entire Sheriff's Office parking lot, Whittington said.
The proposed expansion is approximately 55,000 square feet.
Potential additional costs would include purchasing additional property for parking.
The construction cost estimate is $36 million, Whittington said.
Kozlowski said there have been two components to the discussion — construction and operations.
"We've learned that actually building the jail is the easy part, we're told," he said. "The hard part is actually going to be able to ... afford to maintain it and run it for many years to come."
He said the current jail was undersized to begin with.
The proposed jail would have an operationally-efficient design, with a mezzanine, Kozlowski said.
The design is an open concept, so corrections officers can keep an eye on everyone in the jail.
He said a few additional corrections officers will have to be hired, because of the increase in inmates.
"We're calling this an addition, but really it's a new facility added on to our existing Sheriff's Department," Kozlowski said.
The county is applying for $15 million in grant funds from the state, and has saved an additional $15 million for the project, he said.
"I think that's a pretty aggressive grant application, because we can say we have a 100% match," Kozlowski said.
Kozlowski said the commissioners saved the money from federal COVID-19 relief funds, along with spending less on general fund items and taking in increased revenue.
That leaves a $6 million difference, plus any ancillary costs.
"It would be our desire, the commissioners' desire, for us to borrow funds to pay for that difference," Kozlowski said.
Niemi said he expects the county will likely hear about whether or not the county received the grant by June.
In response to a question from the audience about what would happen to the old jail, Whittington said the space would need to be renovated before it could be used for anything else.
She said the commissioners have been fiscally conservative over the last eight years to save money.
Niemi said there is a lot of work that would need to renovate the current jail space before it could be used again.
The county cannot demolish the current facility, because the second floor is connected to the courts, Kozlowski said.
He said construction is expected to take three years, in response to a question from Ashtabula City Manager Jim Timonere.
The county needs the grant for the project to move forward, Kozlowski said.
However, Gov. Mike DeWine included $130 million in his proposed state budget for jail renovation and construction, he said.
Whittington said this is not the first grant the county has applied for.
"Our chances are getting better, because others have already been funded through the other grant opportunities that, unfortunately, we were not awarded," she said.
Ducro said the county has not had funds to put forward as a match for grant requests before.
Kozlowski said the county is being methodical in their grant request.
"We learned, don't ask for the full amount and hope we're going to get less," he said.
After the meeting, Niemi said the county has to do something.
"I can't keep the community safe as they deserve and they way it should be, because you've got to put people in jail when needed," he said. "It's a law and order issue, it's a safety issue. It affects the entire county. This is an option for us to do it, to where we don't have to go to the taxpayer and ask for more money."