Countywide : Board Formally OKs Canyon Site for Jail

The county Board of Supervisors on Wednesday formally approved plans to build a jail in Gypsum and Coal canyons, near the cities of Anaheim and Yorba Linda.

The vote was 3 to 2, with Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Don R. Roth dissenting. The location for the jail had been tentatively approved at a crowded public hearing July 15. The vote that day was the same.

Roth lives in Anaheim, where residents staged rallies to complain about the jail being so close. And the proposed site is in Vasquez’s district.

Roth complained Tuesday that the county was going ahead with $6 million in preliminary design work and environmental impact reports before it has decided how to pay for the estimated $600-million jail.

“It is very clear to me we are again going ahead to place the cart before the horse,” Roth said.

Vasquez said, “I continue to have grave reservations about this site.”

The county is under orders from a federal judge to ease severe overcrowding in its jails. The proposed jail would include 6,191 beds.

Nearby residents had complained to the board that the jail would lower property values and jeopardize public safety.

The supervisors’ vote clears the way for the county to begin soliciting bids for designing the jail. That work is expected to be completed next summer.