Report Favors Canyon Jail But O.C. Can’t Afford Any

Orange County cannot afford to build and operate an often-touted new jail in the Riverside desert, and instead should concentrate on developing a controversial site near Anaheim, county planners conclude in a draft report obtained Tuesday.

The report acknowledges, however, that even that proposal--to build in Gypsum Canyon--comes with a huge and unresolved problem: The county has no way to pay for that facility either.

Those findings--assembled by the county administrative office and subject to review by the Board of Supervisors--offer little hope of soon solving the county’s mounting jail-overcrowding crisis. More than 4,400 prisoners already are jammed into jails designed to hold 3,203, and thousands are being let go early every year to make room for more serious criminals.

With the board long deadlocked over the Gypsum Canyon proposal, Supervisor Don R. Roth has been the primary advocate of building a desert jail in Riverside County, which he hoped would be a cheaper way of moving forward. Roth has also argued that building the jail in a remote desert location might make it more acceptable to residents who don’t want it in their community.

However, the 54-page draft report, which was circulated to board members late Tuesday, is likely to deal that proposal a severe, perhaps fatal, blow. For while the report notes that such a jail “is a feasible alternative available to the Board of Supervisors in order to acquire needed jail beds,” it goes on to conclude that the facility actually would cost more to build and operate over a 30-year period than a jail in Gypsum Canyon.

The total cost of building and operating Gypsum Canyon for 30 years would be $1.05 billion, according to the report. A 2,000-bed desert jail at Chiriaco Summit in Riverside is estimated to cost $1.77 billion to build and operate, and a 4,000-bed desert jail is predicted to run $2.02 billion over the same period.

“The bottom line that transcends any site, any location, is that it’s going to be expensive,” said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, whose district includes the Gypsum Canyon site. “That’s the common thread.”

Vasquez, whose has long opposed the Gypsum Canyon plan, said he had not had a chance to read the draft in detail and declined to comment on its specific options and recommendations, as did other supervisors.

“Don (Roth) will not comment to anybody on this today,” said Dan Wooldridge, an aide to the board chairman. “He’s taking the report home with him, and he’ll study it there.”

In addition to recommending that the supervisors reaffirm Gypsum Canyon as their preferred location for a new county jail, the report recommends that they:

* Direct a team of county officials to “re-scope” the Gypsum Canyon project design to make it more affordable;

* Direct the county administrative officer and other officials to search for revenue sources for building in Gypsum Canyon;

* Direct the CAO to report back to the board within a year on the progress toward scaling back the project and finding ways to pay for it;

* Direct the CAO and other agencies to develop a comprehensive program of “Alternatives to Incarceration,” including intensive probation, home confinement and electronic monitoring of convicted criminals.

It is the recommendations regarding the desert jail that are sure to create the biggest stir among supervisors, however. The board has wrestled with the issue of building a new jail for more than a decade, and has made only halting progress.

Three board members voted for Gypsum Canyon in 1987, but it takes four votes to acquire the land through condemnation, and both Roth and Vasquez have remained adamantly opposed. Roth had hoped the desert jail might break the deadlock, but the report makes it clear that such a course is unlikely.

Among other things, the desert jail would trigger some indirect expenses that inflate its overall price tag. Building a regional jail in the desert would force the county to keep open the James A. Musick Branch Jail, for instance, in order to house inmates who are awaiting trial. A desert jail also could not accommodate pretrial inmates because it would be more than 100 miles from the courthouse in Santa Ana.

Gypsum Canyon is much closer, and could be used to house pretrial inmates as well as those who have been sentenced. Building a jail in Gypsum Canyon would give the county enough new beds to close the Musick facility near El Toro and sell the land there.

Still, while Roth’s desert jail proposal is the most obvious victim of the draft report’s findings, Gypsum Canyon suffers from significant drawbacks as well.

“While the Gypsum Canyon Jail is a financially more desirable alternative over the long term, Orange County currently does not have the financial resources needed for the initial capital expense, the ongoing level of expenditures, and a debt service payment schedule required with any of the scenarios presented in this report,” county planners wrote. “Previous construction has been with the aid of state jail construction bond funds, which are not currently available.”

The county faces deep budget shortfalls already, and some officials are worried that an upcoming mid-year budget report could force serious cutbacks in programs or even layoffs of some employees.

But budget problems notwithstanding, the jail study echoes what many officials have been saying in recent weeks: Orange County’s jail overcrowding problem has reached a critical point, and the supervisors cannot simply push the issue aside.

“Additional beds are critically needed in Orange County,” the report concludes. “Existing overcrowded conditions, combined with projected inmate population increases, make the acquisition of additional (beds) a significant priority that cannot be ignored.”

Moreover, the problem needs quick attention if the county hopes to deal with overcrowding before the turn of the century:

“Given the time frames involved in construction of jails, new jail construction will need to begin in the very near future in order to meet Orange County’s bed needs by the year 2006,” the report said. “Even under the best of scenarios, it will take until the year 1998 to construct all 5,946 beds (needed to meet the project shortage), assuming that board approval is obtained in January, 1991.”

Supervisors and their staffs are reviewing the findings of the draft report and will send comments back to the county administrative office during the next several days. The board is expected to receive the report formally at its Dec. 18 meeting, and it could act on the recommendations at that time.