County Jail To Remain In Hands Of The County
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County Jail To Remain In Hands Of The County
McLennan County Commissioners have decided against plans to privatize an existing county jail. Now, they must find a way to pay for a new one.
Reporter: Megan Fleetwood
Email Address: megan.fleetwood@kwtx.com
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(August 6, 2008) - McLennan County commissioners voted Tuesday to keep the jail on Highway 6 under management of the Sheriff's office.

That put more than 200 jailers who work there at ease, previously concerned their jobs would be threatened if the county let a private jailing company take over the facility.

While the current jail will remain in the hands of the county, commissioners are considering letting a private company pay to build a new jail near it.

Commissioner Ray Meadows says the company would foot all costs for construction, and operation of the jail.

The county would pay to lease space from the company for inmates, and after about 25 years, ownership would be given to the county.

Commissioner Tim Brown of Bell County says the option of privatization was ruled out by his Bell commissioners because numbers showed in the long run it cost more to pay for the jail construction than to lease space.

The new Bell County jail is scheduled to become operational by November of this year.

Brown says once it's complete, the new facility will be a revenue source.

Bell County can lease extra space out to other counties.

Meadows says he believes the burden of paying for a multi-million dollar jail would be very large for McLennan County.

He says there is no guarantee of revenue generation, if there were not enough interested parties to lease remaining space.

While the funding decision is not certain, Meadows says the desperate need for more space is.

The county is currently paying around $5,000 a day to lease space for overflow inmates.

The commissioner says the decision about a new facility, and whether to continue the private contract for the county's detention annex downtown will probably be decided within the next month.

Latest Comments

Posted by: ras Location: centex on Aug 7, 2008 at 08:58 AM

Please News 10 get it right. The sheriff gets $12.000.00 a year from CEC. He then sends county prisoners to the CEC jail and the taxpayers pay $5,000 a day. CEC takes care of Larry and Larry takes care of CEC. Certainly we can staff the downtown COUNTY OWNED jail for $5,000 a day. If we did that, Larry would lose his kickback.
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