The Jackson County Commissioners’ Court held an open town hall meeting at the extension services building for the county to discuss plans for the Emergency Operations Center.
The county judge, commissioners, people from the jail commission, and consultants from Burns Architecture LLC were in attendance to answer questions.
The Jail Commission stated the jail standards are in compliance at this time.
The Jackson County jail was built in 1981, with additional reconstruction in 1989, and renovated in 1994. It began with 24 beds and then 32 beds; with inmates starting at 52 and now reaching a capacity of 74. The Jail Commission recommended that the county be prepared with 96 beds.
A census was shared and it was stated that the county in 2024 had 15,000 citizens and should grow to 17,000 by the year 2050.
Sheriff Rick Boone gave a verbal tour of the current jail and shared the liabilities which need to be fixed.
“I inherited the jail issue,” he said. “I started in 1990 and I’ve been employed in all the different categories. There’s been a growth of population in the jail.
“The calls coming in have grown substantially. Today, we have 58 people in our jail and two are on misdemeanor charges, whereas in the past, the numbers were swapped,” Boone explained. “When the jail was built it wasn’t for housing females, and there will be two females from out of state which will be coming in soon.”
He went on to say Victoria County has beds but not enough personnel, and the county currently is in an agreement with Calhoun to house extra inmates. Calhoun was charging $55 a day and is the lowest in the area. Although they recently raised it to $75 it is still the cheapest in the area.
“Most everyone is charging $100 a day, not counting medical costs,” Boone said. “So if the new jail would start building today and be finished in two years like it’s being thought of, at $100 per day to rehouse all the inmates would be $3.2 million in costs, and that’s not counting medical costs.”
He said the everything is too small now, the size of the doors, the walkways, all the numbers have been raised, but the county is simply dealing with it for now.
Boone said they enjoy giving tour of the jail, but asked for people to call in advance to set up a tour, because they remove the inmates and put them outside. Calling ahead allows them to prepare for the visit, and he asked if it was a group, to limit themselves to six people or less, due to the lack of space.
“My staff does a really good job in keeping it clean,” Boone said. “We have to in order to make things go smoothly.”
Judge Jill Sklar said the last time Senator Joan Huffman visited the county, she said she wanted to help with infrastructure, and Sklar shared that the county needs a new jail.
“We’ve secured $5 million for the EOC,” she said.
Kenny Burns from Burns Architecture LLC said the hard cost for the jail is $4 million and the extra million is set aside for the soft costs, meaning couches, chairs, desk, etc.
Most of the questions came from only a few citizens and brought up topics like building on top of the jail, turning the extension services auditorium into a temporary courthouse which would up the need for more personnel, the amount of cases processed, and what could happen to repurpose the space of the current jail.
District Clerk Sharon Mathis said there are so many hours in a day and they don’t have enough judges and court space at this time. With one courtroom the county is limited to their settings and everything must be scheduled for the courtroom, not to mention the extension services auditorium.
The question became, what’s more important, processing cases or allowing the building to be used for other things like 4-H meetings, school functions, graduation get-togethers and other miscellaneous reasons to use the auditorium.
Lastly, Burns and his team showed what the layout of the new jail would look like at this time, but it wasn’t a final layout, it’s only preliminary plans. The company followed the rules from the ICC 500, which is the standard for the design and construction of storm shelters. Thus far, it’s about roughly 60 feet wide by 80 feet long. He stressed the importance of the budget and keeping within it.
Lastly, the court moved to close the meeting.
The Jackson County Herald-Tribune livestreamed the meeting, and it can be found on their Facebook page. The meeting lasted around an hour and a half.
