Of the $23,600,000 in federal funding the Halifax County Board of Commissioners will request through Congressman Don Davis, $20 million is slated for expansion and renovation of the current detention center.
County Manager Dia Denton presented the list of community funding requests to the board at its meeting Monday night.
Denton told the board the jail was recently added to the list of potential federal funding items. The jail has a capacity of 85 inmates. “We usually have inmates in other jails or counties which costs money to house them and to bring them back and forth to court. And at the same time the current jail being 40-years-old is in need of some renovations at this point.”
There are also many inmates housed at the jail for mental illness, Denton said. “With the hospital eventually closing its mental health unit I can only assume that they may trickle in to us in some cases with individuals who have nowhere else to go and they end up in our jail for a period of time.”
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There have been discussions of the possible construction of a section of the detention center for inmates who need mental health treatment, Denton said.
Around nine years ago the proposed cost came in around $12.8 million.
She said the different funding requests the county has included for possible federal funding would be farmed out to different agencies, hence the reason for submitting all six of the requests.
When commissioners discussed the jail project in the past they discussed a jail with an inmate capacity of more than 100.
Commissioner Sammy Webb said for at least the last 10 years the jail has been overcrowded with normally 104 to 110 inmates on average.
There are programs such as electronic monitoring to avoid putting inmates in jail due to the overcrowding, Webb said. “Then you look at our bonds compared to other counties — we have more unsecured bonds, we have low bonds and I think that jail not being renovated is a public safety issue.”
Commissioner Carolyn Johnson suggested “when we get this money” to look at the architectural plans which are already on file.
County Attorney Glynn Rollins said in late 2019 the county was working through the financing of a jail but the matter was suspended. He said the county could pick back up discussions with Moseley Architects. “I feel like it could be fairly easy to get back into what we were doing. We’ve got a great financial adviser if we had to do any kind of financing with whatever other assistance we might be getting.”
Denton said bidding documents are also available from the past discussions on the matter.
Webb made the motion to move forward with requests on a second by Chenoa Richardson Davis. The measure passed unanimously.
