Planning Panel OKs Jail Expansion Study

Despite vehement opposition from surrounding communities, county planning commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend approval of an environmental report that would allow the expansion of James A. Musick Branch Jail into a maximum-security facility.

Jerry Krans, the assistant sheriff who supervises the county’s jails, said the decision “takes us a step in the direction to solve overcrowding.”

About 25 people attended Tuesday’s meeting, nine of whom spoke before the commission. Many opponents of the jail expansion said the low turnout was because the meeting was at 1:30 p.m., when most people are at work.

Christopher Caldwell, an attorney for Lake Forest, said the environmental impact report before the commissioners takes issues such as property values, public safety and traffic problems and “sweeps them all under the rug.” Residents criticized the methods used to analyze property values and traffic volume.

But county officials contended that they had followed state environmental laws, and in fact, gone beyond the requirements of the law.

Caldwell and others urged the Planning Commission to postpone a vote to allow more time to consider those issues. Planning Commissioner Tom Moody did propose to delay the vote for two weeks, but the motion failed.

Marcia Rudolph, who lives near the jail, said she believed the commissioners were rushing their decision.

“This is in the wrong place,” Rudolph said. “It would make much more sense to find a location that we can all buy into . . . that allows us all to go marching behind the sheriff rather than in opposition to the sheriff.”

Since the 1980s, the county has grappled with a jail overcrowding problem that has resulted in the early release of tens of thousands of inmates, many of whom committed other crimes during the time they were supposed to be in jail, according to sheriff’s deputies.

If the Board of Supervisors ratifies the report in early November, the county would proceed with construction plans for Musick, converting the minimum security jail that currently houses about 1,200 people to a 7,500-bed maximum security prison.

Even if the supervisors approve the plans, construction may not begin for another three to five years, county officials said.

Construction of similar facilities elsewhere has been proposed over the years, but always failed due to various reasons, including funding shortages and public outcries.

The proposal to expand Musick--tucked between the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Irvine and Lake Forest--is not new. In 1986, thousands of area residents protested a move to add more beds to the jail, and the proposal failed.

Marcel Fernandez, a real estate broker who lives in nearby Serrano Park, said he was part of that fight, which blew “the plan to pieces” 10 years ago. But this time, he said, the fight will be more difficult.

“We don’t have the support [from the Board of Supervisors] this time,” Fernandez said. Supervisor Don Saltarelli “doesn’t even know where he stands on this.” Saltarelli, whose district includes most of Lake Forest, has not publicly opposed the jail expansion.

At Tuesday’s meeting, residents also questioned whether the project is cost efficient and proposed alternatives to the jail. But planning commissioners said their responsibility was to determine whether the report itself passed muster, not to find alternatives or ways to fund the project.

Commissioner Ben Nielsen said he voted to ratify the report for the safety of the county as a whole. Nielsen said he was “most concerned” with sheriff’s statistics indicating that about 12,000 inmates either had been cited or released or released early from county jails in the past six months.

Planning Commissioner Shirley Long said, “This is a difficult issue for everybody. . . . The sheriff is trying to keep people in jail in jail.”