Board Acts to Lock Up a Gypsum Canyon Jail : Corrections: County supervisors reaffirm choice of site, order negotiations to begin with the Irvine Co.

Orange County supervisors approved sweeping measures Tuesday aimed at easing severe jail overcrowding, with a split board backing a controversial new facility in Gypsum Canyon that would be the largest public works project in county history.

“We’ve got to move ahead,” Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said during a three-hour board session watched by a packed and attentive audience. “Our priorities have to be to site and to move right ahead and to build a facility to house people who break the law.”

Wieder was joined by Supervisors Roger R. Stanton and Thomas F. Riley in approving proposals intended to break a three-year logjam on the jail issue. Most significantly, the board authorized negotiations with the Irvine Co., which owns the 2,500-acre property, to discuss buying the Gypsum Canyon land. The supervisors also instructed the county attorney to prepare legal action if those negotiations do not show progress in the next 60 days.

Together, those moves could set the county’s jail construction efforts back on track after years of delay. In 1987, the board approved Gypsum Canyon as its preferred site, but little progress has been made since then, and the county’s jails continue to overflow with prisoners.

“The action today means we’re off the dime,” Stanton said after the meeting. “We’re going to get the land, one way or another.”

Supervisors Don R. Roth and Gaddi H. Vasquez, who have long opposed Gypsum Canyon, continued to do so Tuesday. Roth in particular objected to the project, arguing that the county budget is too strapped to take on the massive jail. Some estimates put construction costs at higher than $1 billion, and annual operating budgets are expected to top $100 million.

The county has no money in its budget to pay either of those bills.

“If we really believe that the buck stops here . . . then we’d better make a decision about how we’re going to pay for these jail cells,” Roth said. “I think when we take a look at the numbers that even a half-cent sales tax isn’t sufficient for the operating costs.”

Although Roth voted against reaffirming the board’s support for Gypsum Canyon, he joined the majority in approving a financial study of the facility. The study is expected to review ways of making the jail smaller and cheaper, and will also review operations costs.

Concerned about the price tag, Roth had launched efforts to study putting a new jail in the Riverside County desert. The Orange County administrative office, however, dealt that proposal a setback in a recent report, which was formally received by the board Tuesday.

That report concluded that the desert jail would be exorbitantly expensive to operate and, over a 30-year period, would cost at least $1.5 billion more than Gypsum Canyon.

The supervisors’ discussion Tuesday capped two months of increasingly intense debate surrounding the county’s jail-overcrowding problems, and came at a time when the board is under growing pressure to act. In late October, a federal judge, prompted by reports of increasingly severe overcrowding, ordered a monitor to inspect the jails and report back to him.

The judge’s action--and the monitor’s subsequent report--touched off a flurry of activity regarding the state of the county jails. The federal monitor, Lawrence Grossman, urged the board to press ahead with Gypsum Canyon, as did the county administrative office and the Orange County Grand Jury.

Grand Jury Foreman Grant Baldwin attended Tuesday’s session, and he reiterated the jurors’ support for Gypsum Canyon. “It is the opinion of this panel that the board must move forward to acquire this site,” Baldwin said.

Opponents of the jail were also vocal, however, and many registered their objections Tuesday. City officials from Anaheim, Placentia, Yorba Linda and Corona all spoke against the jail. Some raised concerns about increased traffic on the Riverside Freeway and the impact of building a jail close to growing residential areas. Others cited continuing questions about how the county would pay for its new jail.

“You have chosen to build the Cadillac of jails,” Yorba Linda Mayor Mark Schwing said. “Before you plunge headlong into this fiscal folly, a source of acquisition and construction funds must be identified and reasonably secured.”

But both Stanton and Wieder, backed by Riley, argued that switching sites now would set back the county’s jail expansion efforts by at least three years, time that it can ill afford to lose as the number of arrests mount annually.

Stanton also roundly rejected the traffic concerns, noting that while visitors to the Gypsum Canyon Jail would no doubt add marginally to traffic, the alternative proposed for the canyon is thousands of new homes to be built by the Irvine Co. The company’s development is expected to add 80,000 car trips a day to the highway, while the jail is estimated to produce an additional 6,000 trips, county officials said.

Wieder stressed the public safety implications of continuing to dicker with the jail proposal. Without a major new facility, Wieder said, the sheriff has been forced to release thousands of prisoners every year to make room in the jails for more serious offenders.

Those prisoners go back out on the street and into the community, Wieder said, giving them the opportunity to commit more crimes when they otherwise would have been in jail.

“Nobody wants (a jail) in their back yard,” Wieder said. “The choice is not only not in my back yard, but not in my bedroom or in my kitchen.”

Gates, who attended the board meeting, agreed that the county’s public safety depends on construction of a new jail, and he commended the board for its action.

“This is something we’ve been waiting for for three years,” Gates said. “I’m glad the board acted as it did.”

In addition to their Gypsum Canyon votes, the supervisors also agreed to hire jail expert Grossman as a consultant. Grossman will advise the county on jail construction and operations issues, and is expected to play an important role in scaling down the Gypsum Canyon project to make it more affordable.

Attention will now shift from the board room to the negotiating table.

County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider will head the county’s negotiating team, which will begin meeting with Irvine Co. executives sometime after Jan. 9. Irvine Co. Senior Vice President Gary Hunt is expected to lead the company’s representatives at those talks.

That meeting will mark the first time that both sides have ever met formally to discuss the property.

Larry Thomas, the Irvine Co.’s vice president for corporate communications, said Tuesday that company officials are not viewing the talks as a formal negotiation but have agreed to meet with the county.

“As a courtesy, we are prepared to sit down and see what they have to say,” Thomas said. “But we are not prepared and have no interest in opening negotiations for the sale of the land.”

County officials, however, view the opening of talks as an encouraging sign.

“We’ll be talking about how we can convince them to sell us this piece of property,” Schneider said. “That’s a big step.”

The Gypsum Canyon Jail Decision

By a 3-2 vote, the Orange County Board of Supervisors reaffirmed support for a maximum-security jail to be built in Gypsum Canyon northeast of Anaheim and agreed to move toward buying the land.

YES Thomas F. Riley, District 5 “We looked at all the options, and we’ve spent $7.7 million studying Gypsum Canyon. I think it’s time we got on with it.” Roger R. Stanton, District 1 “What I’m concerned with is that the people of this county . . . and certainly the federal courts look at us finding reasons not to proceed with this project. It is something we ought to proceed with.” Harriett M. Wieder, District 2 “The County of Orange is currently faced with the difficult and immediate task of acquiring additional jail beds . . . .The most reasonable alternative available to the county is the proposed Gypsum Canyon jail.” NO Don R. Roth, District 4 “I have been convinced by the media blitz and by the sheriff and everybody in the whole world telling us that we need more jail beds. . . .(but) I don’t see us building Gypsum Canyon until we get some type of handle on the financial cost.” Gaddi H. Vasquez, District 3 “The bottom line has to be the money. Where are we going to get the money to build and operate this facility?” NEXT STEP

County officials will begin negotiations with the Irvine Co., owner of the site, in January.

If talks show no progress within 60 days, the county counsel is directed to prepare legal action.

Source: Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting and recent interviews.