Countywide : Borrowing of Money for Jail, Morgue OKd

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 0 Tuesday to borrow $22.4 million to help build a new jail and a county morgue, and help buy a permanent home for two other county departments.

The supervisors approved issuing bonds that would reap $12.8 million in immediate funds that, combined with other county money and $30.9 million in state funds, would pay for construction of a new $53.7-million jail at the Todd Road site in Santa Paula.

Their vote also approved issuing $2.5 million worth of bonds for construction of a new county morgue and medical examiner’s offices.

That structure would replace the sheet-metal building now housing the coroner’s offices. It also would relieve the Ventura County Medical Center of the burden of handling all of the county coroner’s death investigations in its cramped basement morgue.

The bond issue also generates $2.7 million to purchase a two-story, 24,500-square-foot office building near the County Government Center in Ventura that houses county Air Pollution Control District headquarters and the offices of the County Farm Advisor. The purchase will allow the saving of nearly $27,000 a year in rent that the county now pays to the building’s owner.