The following is taken from the CONSENT CALENDAR of the July 19th Caldwell City Council meeting item #5:
"5. Approve Resolution, at the request of the City of Caldwell and the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, authorizing a waiver of the amendment application fee in the amount of $295.37 to amend a condition of approval for the county work release inmate center special use permit;"
Team Garret and the Caldwell city councilors have been brandished as uncooperative by County Commishes and our Top Copper for the County. Sheriff Smith has stated on the record the City of Caldwell refused to grant permission to use the county work release facility to incarcerate county jail inmates. It now appears Team Garret has bent over backwards to accommodate this request and even gave them a free ride on the fees regular citizen have to pay. All the while expediting Sheriff Smith's request to amend his special use permit.
Sheriff Smith and our County Commishes have been sitting on 165 empty jail beds and sending inmates to other counties for several years at huge costs to county taxpayers. They even closed the annex jail at a cost of $300k for several months. We taxpayers paid $2 million to renovate the annex to bring it back on line in 2000/2001. It all boiled down to ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE permission to use all those idle work release jail beds as you see fit.
Can they explain why they never asked to use these beds before sending prisoners out of county costing all of us money? Why didn't they get with Caldwell before now?
ReplyDeleteThis jail project just gets more holes poked in it every day. All those beds empty in the tent make me angry.
Iread the paper on Sunday about the jail costs to operate. Mr. Alldredge cited average costs of $60 a day and the county said it would cost $46/day. By my calculations we are talking about the difference between $11 million more to operate the palce v. the $14.3 million city by Mr. Alldredge.
ReplyDeleteThese costs will be in addition to the bond repayment costs of $3 million a year. I don't think they said they would close the current jail down, just the annex portion.
If the current jail budget is $9 million plus $3million to pay for the bond and another $11-14 million to operate the new jail ...my god where does this all stop? We're talking $24-27million a year just for jail costs. How can they say taxes won't go up?