Placentia : City Administrator Asks That Santa Ana Get Jail

The city added its voice to the chorus opposing a large jail in the canyons east of Anaheim Hills, with the city administrator saying Tuesday that Santa Ana is the ideal location because it is the county seat.

Last week, the Placentia City Council voted unanimously to ask the Board of Supervisors to reconsider its July 15 decision to build a 6,000-inmate jail at Gypsum-Coal canyons and to put the facility instead in Santa Ana.

City Administrator Roger L. Kemp said the city has also asked other cities to join them in asking supervisors to reconsider its vote.

“The logic behind (the City Council vote) was that the jail ought to be located next to the criminal justice system, and most of it is in Santa Ana,” Kemp said. “Santa Ana is the county seat, and being the county seat they ought to take all the government buildings, the good and the bad.”

The same argument was made unsuccessfully by residents of Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills at the public hearing preceding the supervisors’ 3-2 vote for the site east of Anaheim Hills. The Placentia Unified School District earlier had objected to the site, as did the council.

The council, in its latest resolution, said adding a jail in Santa Ana, which already has the main jail, “would hold down the cost of government by reducing transportation, overtime and related personnel costs and minimize potential risks to the general public.”