“The sense I’ve had from a lot of the public is they want that treatment component included,” Wend said. “In the long run, you save lots of dollars that way, and you prevent crime..

Sorry Charlie for every study you pull out showing how your ideas work I will find one that shows they don’t . So if you the think the taxpayers in this county are going to pay 150 million dollars so you can build a 5 STAR jail instead of a Motel 6 You really are nuts.
You will be lucky to even have us vote for a motel6.
No Charlie its time to open your eyes and think oustide the box and give us some facts ...
You say its overcrowded ok fine
How many in the jail are illegal and could be turned over to the border patrol and deported or if they are serving a sentence have the border patrol let them serve it somewhere else .. That nice Sheriff in Arizona may have some room and as they are illegal they really have no rights to serve their sentence in Skagit county now do they ?
How many people are in the jail for a DUI or other minor non violent crime that do not need to be housed in an expensive jail designed for major felons , Could we build a nice cheap jail with just some fences and barbed wiree and some bunk houses to house those non violent folks? 
No Charlie your TAJ MAHAL jail is done give it up we are done being taxed out of our houses and Those two questions are the simple ones that you should be able to answer at the drop of the hat ,Wait till I give you the real tough ones if you and the rest of the dreamers are so silly to think we are going to vote for your dream ..
By they way are there not some jails in Eastern washington or Oregon that are looking for more people to fill their empty beds??????????

Why don’t they locate the facility at the old Northern State property east of Sedro-Woolley ?

It’s out of the flood plain, the site is stable and there is plenty of space with room to expand, of course it wouldn’t add to the importance of Mt.Vernon because that’s really the mission here.

Why not isolate the bad people, surly the cost to transport them to the court house would be a pittance. compared to the cost of this bone head suggestion.

What we are looking at here is a classic case of empire building.

Surprise! a modern building costs more than your mobile home.

Surprise! a modern building costs more than your mobile home

Thats a great idea with all the repo mobile homes on the market the county could get great deals on them and house all the non violent DUI and other minor bad guys in some nice used bunks in a nice 10 acre area and then they can use those same people to clean the litter from the streets and freewways now that the state is cutting back on their side of litter cleanup .. lets make this a win for the taxpayers for a change instead of another large endless hole. “"Now this is change we can believe in"”

“The property would certainly cost the county several million dollars. The land alone on the two largest parcels on the property, about 6 acres, was valued at $2.3 million in 2008 by the County ‘

Sow how much are we going to pay for all this swampland that need pilings 80 feet deep ?  Do the buyers of county land think they might should look up the road at burlington I hear they have some land they would like to sell perhaps we could strike a deal or maybe get better swampland for less .

The swampland is the Christianson Seed property across the street from the current jail.

The swampland is the Christianson Seed property across the street from the current jail.

Yes and at one time I thought that was a great location for the new jail but now that the counties own advisors have stated that it has major problems perhaps it is time to look elsewhere. But I forget the taxpayers are a bottomless pit of money for any and all projects these so called smart people dream up.

The numbers quoted in the article don’t seem correct to me.  The piece stated that the original cost per square foot has doubled from the original $49/sf.  If you divide the $150 million building price by say $100/sf, that gives a building area of 1,500,000 sf.  That equates to 2,119 sf gross area per inmate at 708 inmates.  Of course, each cell would be small.  A hotel room is typically about 200 sf.  Does this jail really require 10 times the cell area in other support space (halls, admin, kitchen, etc.)? 

I seriously doubt that this concrete and steel institutional construction can be built for anything close to $100/sf.  RSMeans (a national publication for construction estimation) states that the national average for jail construction in 2008 was $233/sf for the typical face brick with concrete block back-up / steel frame.  Add to that the expense for piling on the poor soil, and the cost per square foot would be even higher.

The amazing part is that the County somehow thought that a jail could be built for $49/sf.

Dear skagit county .. Is it true you have spent over 1/2 million dollars with this Voorhes company for studies on this new jail?? 
Thats the number I come up with the amount of contracts shown on your website . That sure is some expensive paper we bought as thats all I can find is a large amount of facts that are availble to anyone via the internet .. For those of you wondering what I am talking about go to the skagit county jail website and see the fancy smancy report filled with facts from the internet you all bought and paid for .
Seems as though the poster above found the important facts for you for free via the internet . So what else are they doing for half a million dollars or more ??????

Maybe instead of building a bigger jail, they should be more thinking of spending all those millions on keeping people out of jail. Maybe more youth programs, free rides from the bar when your drunk, how about hire a prosecutor that actually puts the guilty in jail, not the broke! Whats Mount Vernon saying to the public by needing a bigger jail anyways? that the criminals are taking over Skagit County? Or are they saying, you better watch out because we will figure out a way to put anyone and everyone in jail? Pass gas in a public area....go to jail. Spit on the ground....go to jail. Walk off the crosswalk....go to jail. Burp in public.....go to jail. Pick your nose....go to jail. In my opinion, Skagit County needs to spend those millions on something more productive, maybe build something more for families, like a zoo or something, better yet....maybe the law and the government needs to step back and let parents discipline their children, without parents worrying about going to jail. Back when I was growing up, it wasn’t against the law to take your child to the wood shed and spank them, and if you do the math....most of those kids are not in jail! Its the newer generation thats going to jail, the ones that have no values, no respect that threaten their parents with charges if they get spanked. You can only teach a child to be good, but what can he learn when you cant enforce it. So go ahead and build the bigger jails, spend the peoples money, it wont do any good....10 years from now, they will have to build it bigger, until the government steps back, and opens their eyes!