The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors majority voted to keep the North County Jail on track — just in the nick of time.
Not long after that board vote, the grand jury released a report on poor conditions at the main jail in Goleta and other institutional facilities in North County. More about that in a moment.
The necessity for a decision on the North County Jail project was that the bidding process for the job involved three general contractors, and all of them came in much higher than the county engineer’s estimate.
The over-run came to nearly $15 million, boosting the overall cost of construction to $110.8 million. The California Board of State Corrections had previously agreed to provide 90 percent of the funding estimated for the project, with a top amount set at $80 million. The state board has refused to pay for the cost over-run.
Thus, the Board of Supervisors faced some tough decisions, and in the end decided to give county staff the task of scrounging up $14.75 million extra, taking $12.2 million from the slow-moving project’s operational budget, and another $2 million from the Sheriff’s Transition and Re-entry complex, which the board had previously rejected.
We’re not construction or fiscal experts, but as taxpayers it seems that if policy makers had moved more expeditiously on the North County Jail project, perhaps the cost over-run issue could have been avoided.
It’s not as though county officials, including board members, were unaware that the county has some deep-rooted and long-running jail problems, which the recent grand jury report made abundantly clear — again.
The main jail in Goleta has been chronically overcrowded for many years, to such an extent that courts have ordered the early release of prisoners so the jail population could get somewhere close to its original, intended inmate capacity.
There also is the long-standing issue of people arrested in North County having to be transported to the Goleta facility, wasting taxpayer money and the hours police officers must spend driving, instead of policing in their communities.
The main focus of the grand jury investigation was crowded conditions at the main jail, which sometimes forces inmates to sleep in plastic tubs on the floor. That may have a visceral appeal to the get-tough-on-criminals crowd, but it ignores one of the basic concepts in the U.S. Constitution barring cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners.
The jury report also targeted court and holding facilities problems in Lompoc, and the County Coroner’s Office for a lack of proper ventilation in the autopsy room, which makes working there intolerable at times.
These are all infrastructure problems that should be, and should have been addressed on a continuing basis. We understand the county and all governments have been through significant funding issues in recent years, but basic infrastructure cannot be ignored.
One bright note in the grand jury report was its praise of the new Santa Maria police station, saying the local City Council and police chief have shown “fiscal responsibility in the funding and use of the facility.”
All of which suggests maybe county government and the Board of Supervisors consider borrowing a page from the city of Santa Maria’s operational playbook, take a few well-placed hints on fiscal responsibility and the commitment to keep up with the times.
That may seem an apples-and-oranges comparison, but it is our experience that if a certain policy works at one level, it could very well work at an even higher level.
May 28, 2015
Santa Maria Times
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