Jail Site Re-Evaluation Rekindles Old Debate : Santa Paula: Supervisor John K. Flynn still backs plan to add beds at the Government Center. Three colleagues want a thorough briefing on why county experts insisted the plan wouldn’t work.

Ventura County supervisors’ decision last week to re-evaluate a County Jail expansion plan has rekindled debate over the board’s 1990 vote to build a new lockup near Santa Paula.

A key consideration at the time was cost. And supervisors now say they want to look again at whether adding hundreds of cells to the existing jail at the County Government Center in Ventura makes more financial sense than a new Santa Paula jail.

“My first choice was to build at the government center until I realized what the price would be,” Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee said.

In 1990, county studies found that the Santa Paula jail would cost 23% less than a same-sized expansion at the government center. And a consultant concluded that a 450-bed jail expansion proposed by Supervisor John K. Flynn would cost much more per square foot than the Santa Paula project.

But Erickson Kildee and Supervisors Vicky Howard and Maria VanderKolk, who have joined the board since the 1990 decision, say they want a thorough briefing on why county experts decided Flynn’s plan would not work.

“We’re just in too much of a budget crunch these days not to seriously look at dollar amounts,” Howard said Friday. “We’re just going to have to go back and revisit the whole thing and do all of the analysis all over again to make sure it was right.”

The cost issue re-emerged at a Jan. 8 hearing, where dozens of speakers told supervisors that a final environmental study of the proposed Santa Paula location is seriously flawed and that the jail should not be built on prime farmland.

Project opponents also questioned the need for the proposed $54-million, 752-bed new jail because the number of inmates in county jails is down sharply and cheaper options are available--specifically Flynn’s proposal.

Flynn offers a $29.4-million plan to add 700 beds by expanding jails at four locations: 450 beds at the government center; 100 beds at the Rose Valley work camp; 100 beds at the Ojai Valley Honor Farm and 50 beds at the East Valley Sheriff’s Station in Thousand Oaks.

A 1,000-space parking garage at the government center would hike the costs another $10.5 million, Flynn said.

That’s $39.9 million for Flynn’s proposal compared to $54 million for the first phase of the Santa Paula jail--though the accuracy of both figures has been questioned.

Flynn described his proposed jail at the government center as “a facility for frugal times. The jail size meets state standards. And environmentally the government center is the premium site.”

But county staff members said last week that project analyses will prove to supervisors that the Santa Paula jail is the best possible option because of cost, space to grow and efficiency of operation.

Though six miles from government-center courtrooms, the jail’s location will not be a problem since it will house sentenced inmates who are not often shuttled back and forth to court, said sheriff’s and public works officials.

The officials, citing a 1990 consultant’s evaluation, said Flynn’s plan makes little sense.

The supervisor’s jail add-on would cost up to 23% more per square foot than the Santa Paula jail without the extra cost of the parking garage, they said. And Flynn’s plan attempts to crowd so many inmates into so little space that it would be impossible to run efficiently, which would mean extra operating costs, they said.

Flynn’s proposal allows just 200 square feet per inmate, compared to 305 per inmate at the Santa Paula facility, the state Board of Corrections’ recommendation of 382 per inmate, and the 408 average for new jails in California, a consultant reported two years ago.

The square footage recommended by Flynn would allow construction of only old-style cellblocks, not the modern “podular” units with day rooms where additional bunks can be placed during overcrowding, they said. That flexibility has allowed the Sheriff’s Department to put 1,000 beds into the existing jail, a facility designed for 436 inmates.

“We’re confident that common sense will prevail when the numbers are looked at in the clear light of day,” Assistant Sheriff Richard S. Bryce said. “We’re a little frustrated with it not moving more rapidly, because we need the jail and we need it now.”

County planners say the new jail is needed because existing lockups can hold less than one-third of the 3,500 inmates projected for the county in the year 2010. The central jail normally has 900 to 1,000 inmates, more than double its capacity, Bryce said.

But Flynn challenged the 20-year projections, citing a drop in inmates since the county began charging cities a booking fee in 1990. Records show a 20% reduction--from an average of 1,459 inmates to 1,165--since the fees began.

Flynn also insisted that his jail plan has never been fully analyzed by the county or its consultants.

“Their interest was really in scrapping my plan,” he said. “That’s like asking McDonald’s to review Carl’s Jr hamburgers and give a report on them.”

When asked if he was proposing a jail with old-styled cellblocks that Bryce said would require many more employees to staff, Flynn responded:

“God, all I’ve got is a concept here. I don’t have architectural drawings. I don’t have a multimillion contract with an architect. I presented the information the best I could. And I’m not too far off the mark even today.”

Flynn said he based his $210 cost per square foot estimate on figures provided by Sacramento County, which opened its new eight-story jail in 1989.

Flynn said he was told that costs there were $193 a square foot and he estimated $210 to be conservative. Sacramento jail engineers said Friday that the true cost of their 460,000-square-foot jail is $104 million after overruns, about $226 a square foot without parking facilities.

That compares to $235 at the Santa Paula location.

But the architectural firm that analyzed Ventura County’s jail options said Flynn’s proposed addition would cost between $265 and $290 a square foot, 13% to 23% more than the Santa Paula jail before adding the costs of a needed government center garage. Flynn’s addition would cost more because it is four stories high instead of one. The mid-rise’s foundation would have to be supported against earthquakes with numerous concrete pilings sunk 100 feet into the ground, the consultant said.

The consultant also said that Flynn’s parking garage would cost about $16.5 million, not the $10.5 million the supervisor estimates.

In response, Flynn said current construction industry figures support his garage estimate, as does a current bid on a new garage at the county hospital.

“I dispute their whole report,” Flynn said. “Their hypothesis was that the Flynn plan is inadequate, so let’s prove that.”

Flynn said he has consistently favored a jail expansion at the government center because that is what the Board of Supervisors promised when building the center in the 1970s. But that changed in the 1980s when state jail bond money became available to counties. About $31 million has been committed to Ventura County for its new jail.

“We promised we’d build all county facilities on this government center. We have plenty of land here to do what needs to be done,” Flynn said. “But now it’s, ‘Let’s go out and build ourselves a brand-new jail.’ ”

Assistant Sheriff Bryce said Ventura County’s history of jail construction should teach a different lesson--that the need for new jails is going to increase as the county continues to grow.

Since 1970, the county population has nearly doubled, but its inmate population has increased five times, sheriff’s records show.

“We’ve been down this road once before, where we build less than we need,” Bryce said. “If they would have approved what (then-Sheriff) Al Jalati recommended 15 years ago then we would not be in this situation today.”

Jalati recommended a 1,000-bed jail at the government center, but supervisors approved 436 beds.

Though the number of inmates in county jails has dropped 22% from a peak in 1989, Sheriff’s Cmdr. Don Lanquist said the decline is an aberration after two decades of growth.

There are fewer inmates today, Lanquist said, because city police release many suspected criminals after ticketing them so as to avoid the county’s new booking fee. Also, the county releases hundreds of inmates into expanded work release and furlough programs, he said.

But the declines from these changes have been absorbed, he said. Lanquist said that 58% of all central jail inmates are felons--up from 40% two years ago--and that misdemeanants average nine prior arrests, including three for felonies.

“If they don’t need to go to jail, we don’t put them there,” Lanquist said.

The 157-acre jail at Todd Road near Santa Paula was favored over the government center expansion partly because 2,307 beds can be built there.

“The important thing is that the Todd Road facility allows for future expansion,” Lanquist said, “because the need for jails is not going to go away.”