COUNTYWIDE : Supervisors to Meet With S.D. Colleagues

The Orange County Board of Supervisors will hold its first-ever joint meeting with the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Nov. 28 to discuss jails, transportation, waste management and other regional concerns.

“This is the first time that the two boards have met formally that I know of,” said John Sibley of the county administrative office.

Sibley said the board would hold its regularly scheduled meeting in Santa Ana, then board a van for the trip to San Diego. The joint meeting is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at the County Administration Building in San Diego.

One of the topics to be discussed during the meeting will be San Diego’s possible participation in a proposed regional jail to be built in eastern Riverside County.

The proposal was unveiled Wednesday by Supervisor Don R. Roth. Next week, he is expected to seek fellow board members’ approval of a feasibility study of the regional jail plan and creation of a Southern California Regional Jail Authority to oversee it.

Roth said a regional jail could serve Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. Los Angeles has never been “contemplated” as part of the program, Roth said.

Although no official letter will be presented during the meeting in San Diego, Roth said he will make it clear that he wants San Diego County to participate in the jail plan.

A regional jail could eliminate the need for a planned county jail in Gypsum Canyon, east of Anaheim Hills, that is opposed by Roth.

But Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates, who will be mounting a campaign for a proposed half-cent sales tax for jail and court construction, has said the county’s jail overcrowding problem would not be solved by “moving it to someone else’s back yard.”