County weighs jail options

With the number of Spokane County inmates continuing to swell, sheriff’s officials are proposing two housing options until a bigger jail can be built.

Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Sparber, head of the sheriff’s jail expansion committee, told Spokane County commissioners Tuesday that the proposals are needed because there is no certainty voters will pass a jail construction bond measure and because a new jail would take five years to build.

Meanwhile, the county’s inmate population is growing by 65 a year – requiring 325 more beds in five years.

Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich’s preferred option would place 240 inmates at the Geiger Corrections Center in two tentlike portable buildings called Sprung Instant Structures at a cost of $2.8 million. Geiger is controlled by county commissioners, but Knezovich would like to make it a part of his jail division.

A second proposal, which could be implemented when more beds are needed, calls for remodeling the county Department of Emergency Management building, behind the Spokane County Jail, to house 190 inmates.

That option, which would cost about $3 million, would create permanent housing, which is advantageous because the Spokane Airport Board plans to cancel Geiger’s airport business park lease in 2013. The current jail, designed to hold 483 inmates when it opened in 1986, now averages 670 to 680. Geiger Corrections Center has served as a safety valve, but has been operating near its capacity of 610.

Either of Tuesday’s proposals for new dormitory-style housing for low- and medium-risk prisoners would take a year to implement.

A key question is whether Knezovich or Geiger director Leon Long would operate the new lockups. Knezovich is an independently elected official while Long answers to county commissioners. Sparber said the Sheriff’s Office and Geiger are at an “impasse,” and there is an appearance of “turf battling.”

Knezovich said he wants to maintain his “good working relationship” with Geiger officials, so he appealed to commissioners for guidance.

If there’s a turf war, someone should have told him, Long said. “We’re peace lovers at Geiger.”

Commissioner Bonnie Mager said the management question is “a huge community issue that we haven’t even discussed as a community yet.” But she wants to resolve it as soon as possible so a jail bond measure can advance.

“I think the job of incarceration belongs to the sheriff,” Commissioner Mark Richard said. “It’s best to put that in the hands of your law enforcement professional.”

Richard said he thinks commissioners’ budgetary control would give them sufficient influence with a future sheriff who might be less agreeable than Knezovich, but Commissioner Todd Mielke had misgivings. He proposed a system in which the sheriff would operate the jail and other county lockups under contract with the commissioners.

County officials plan a retreat meeting in the next two or three weeks to discuss all the jail issues. A decision on consolidation likely will take several months, Richard predicted.

Cost is one of the big issues to be discussed, commissioners agreed.

Estimates Sparber presented Tuesday show it would cost $242,005 more per year for the sheriff to operate any new units at Geiger than if Geiger managed them, because of higher wages.

Knezovich said the additional cost could be viewed as a means of training staff for a new high-security jail. Also, he noted that Geiger corrections officers are negotiating for parity with their jail counterparts, who are represented by a different local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Sparber said it would cost almost $2.8 million to install two Sprung buildings at Geiger, and annual operating costs would be either about $2.7 million or about $3 million. The estimates assume corrections officers each would supervise 60 inmates in a 12-hour shift.

Sparber’s estimates presume the Sheriff’s Office would operate any facility established in the Emergency Management building on the north side of the jail.

Construction, including moving emergency management equipment to another county building, is estimated at $2.9 million. The estimated operating cost would be slightly more than $1.3 million a year.