by Ralph Schwartz
The first cost estimate in four years for a new Skagit County jail has created some sticker shock.
The new number is so high — almost $150 million to construct a facility that would house 708 inmates — that the small number of county officials who have seen the report won’t brief the county commissioners on it anytime soon.
The first phase of the project includes only 428 beds and was expected to cost $49 million in 2005. Now the cost per square foot has doubled, and with demolition and other site costs not considered in 2005, the new price tag is $115 million just for the first phase.
“That’s high,” said Charlie Wend, a state community corrections supervisor who has been on the county Law and Justice Council since its inception in 1994. Although Wend is one of the project leads for the new jail, he hadn’t seen the cost report, made available to the county in the first week of June, until a reporter showed it to him Tuesday.
Still, the cost wasn’t a complete surprise to Wend.
“I knew all along this thing was going to be costly,” he said.
Under the current plan, the new jail would have more than just cells. It would include courtrooms, county attorneys’ offices, and mental health and chemical dependency treatment centers.
‘The full-meal deal’
One of the biggest reasons for the increased expense is the architect’s proposal to elevate the jail 12 feet above ground to provide parking underneath the building and keep the first floor well above flood level.
At that height, the foundation alone would cost $17 million for the full, 708-bed facility, which could be needed as early as 2025, according to the 2005 report.
The county commissioners selected the Alf Christianson Seed facility south of Kincaid Street in downtown Mount Vernon as the site of the proposed jail. The soil in the area is so unstable that the jail would need to be built on pilings set 90 feet into the ground, according to the architect’s report.
“You’re building on quicksand, basically,” county Capital Facilities Manager Al Jongsma said.
Jongsma, one of a small number of county officials who have studied the report since it arrived earlier this month, believes he can find ways to cut costs significantly.
“I’m not comfortable at this point saying this is the best we can do with our cost figures,” he said. “I’m all about trying to reduce this cost.”
That’s why the commissioners won’t be fully briefed on the report for about 60 days, Jongsma said. He wants to use that time to bring the bottom line down to a more realistic level.
County Administrator Tim Holloran, who also has seen the report, said that scaling back the jail plan is not only possible, but it may be necessary in the current economic climate.
“It’s the full-meal deal, and our economy is the brown-bag lunch,” Holloran said. “It may not be the best design.”
Jongsma, who has a background in construction, said there are two ways to save money on the foundation. Either eliminate the ground-level parking and buy more land for a parking lot, or make the building that sits on the pilings lighter, using less expensive materials.
Jongsma would recommend eliminating the parking under the building, but the decision will first be addressed by the Law and Justice Council and ultimately by the commissioners, he said.
To meet current flood-protection requirements, any building constructed on the Christianson Seed property must be at least 2 feet above ground level in any case.
The voters decide
Building and then running a new jail will involve other costs that aren’t yet known. Jongsma is waiting for an appraisal of the 10-acre Christianson Seed property, which he said was two weeks overdue on Wednesday.
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 Assessor’s Office.
As county officials try to figure out how to pay for the new jail, they also must factor in the cost of day-to-day operations — mainly the salaries paid to jail staff. County Budget and Finance Director Trisha Logue said she doesn’t have an estimate for operating costs yet. The 2005 estimate for operating costs, based on a slightly smaller jail and the lower wages of that time, was $4.3 million a year.
County officials are planning for a ballot measure that would ask voters for a tax increase to pay for the jail.
The commissioners have said they are more likely to ask voters for a sales tax increase to finance the jail, rather than the potentially more unpopular property tax hike.
State law allows a maximum sales tax increase of 0.3 percent for law and justice programs.
Logue said a consultant is still working out how much the 0.3 percent increase would raise for a new jail.
There may be grant money available for energy-efficient construction or drug treatment, but the county has found nothing definite, Logue said.
Forty percent of any additional sales-tax revenue approved by voters would go directly to the cities. County officials said the cities need to agree to funnel that money to the county so it can pay off the bond, or else bear higher daily rates for putting people in the jail.
“It needs to be a partnership both of will and of money,” Commissioner Sharon Dillon said. “They (the cities) need to believe in this, too.”
The measure won’t be on the ballot until next spring at the earliest, county officials have said.
‘We can’t wait’
The jail’s Web site, http://www.skagitcounty.net/jail, includes a weekly statistics page that reports how many people were arrested but not jailed due to overcrowding, and how many inmates were released early because jail staff needed the bed for someone else.
The current jail, completed in 1984 and designed to house 83 inmates, was later remodeled to hold 180 beds. For the week ending June 13, the jail averaged 214 inmates.
In that same week, seven inmates were released early to relieve overcrowding, and 20 people who were arrested never made it to jail because there was no room.
On Tuesday, Chief Corrections Officer Gary Shand hadn’t seen the architect’s cost estimate, so he could not comment on it.
“I will tell you one thing: We can’t wait. There’s just no way we can wait,” Shand said.
Another reason the jail is relatively expensive is that the plans include functions not found in the current jail: more courtrooms, and programs to help people manage mental illness or overcome alcoholism and drug addiction.
Wend, the government official who has worked on the jail proposal the longest, didn’t want to see the new facility reduced to what he called a warehouse for offenders. “Reducing recidivism” is the mantra that law and justice officials won’t easily give up.
“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.”
Commissioner Dillon, who is still months away from any major decisions on the jail, has spoken in favor of bringing treatment services inside the new jail. Last week, however, she was reluctantly willing to leave those services out, at least in the first phase, if the result is a jail the community can afford.
“It may not be something we can ask the voters to do,” Dillon said of the more expensive option.
Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or .
