As ideas go, Sheriff Rocky Watson’s proposal to build a Kootenai County work farm for eligible inmates isn’t that new.

Work farms for jails and prisons have been around for years. But Kootenai County hasn’t had one. As state and local officials search for ways to preserve bed space for inmates, ideas like Watson’s should be encouraged rather than dismissed out of hand as something that hasn’t been done in his county before.

Watson envisions building a Kootenai County work farm on county land surrounding the landfill, south of Coeur d’Alene, and requiring sentenced prisoners to work on the farm or at the landfill. The county has hundreds of acres of land for a farm but not enough of the right kind of prisoners now to do the work. So, Watson has made the proposal to initiate discussion about a center he hopes will be in operation within a decade, probably after he retires.

Before the county breaks ground for a work farm, however, it faces the tough task of selling the public on a dramatic expansion of the current jail, which could carry a price tag of $40 million to $50 million. Then, the county may have to expand the jail again before it will have the prisoner base to provide a stable work population for the farm even if it was built as a regional facility. Eventually, that will happen, whether county residents prefer to pay for the expansions with a local-option sales tax or property tax. That’s why it’s important to begin the discussion about the work farm now. A decade may seem a long way off. But it isn’t in local government time.