Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 19, 1994 TAG: 9411210066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
The planned jail's population may actually surpass 360 inmates for at least one month as early as 2003. By 2018, it is projected to average 469 prisoners during the year and as many as 616 during one month.
The jail, to be located on 15 acres in the Pulaski County Industrial Park, is planned to allow an increase in prisoner beds to 600 with the same administrative and services facilities.
That might have to be done sooner than 2018 if localities that are not now part of the project decide to join it. Localities involved include Radford and counties of Pulaski, Giles, Floyd, Grayson and Tazewell.
Assistant Radford City Manager Bob Lloyd said the jail's natural geographic area could also cover Montgomery, Bland, Smyth, Wythe and Carroll counties and Galax.
Wythe and Carroll counties were part of an earlier regional jail study but dropped out. Carroll was considered as a jail site, which may be one of the reasons it left.
Lloyd is chairman of the regional jail study committee, which met Thursday night with legislators to get their support for state funding.
The project started because of the age, overcrowding and inefficiencies of local jails. The remaining localities in the ``natural envelope'' that the regional jail could serve, Lloyd said, decided to stick with their own jails.
``However, we feel, and the Department of Corrections feels, I might add, that these jails in this area will become issues that must be considered,'' he said.
Bill King, an official with Thompson & Litton, an architectural and engineering firm that is working on the project, said after the meeting that the addition of some or all of those localities would speed the need for expanding the regional jail.
``It all depends on the timing. You saw that movie, `Field of Dreams' - `Build it and they will come,''' he said, applying the film's baseball quote to jail prisoners.
``Most of the jails are old and overcrowded, and have to be brought up to standards,'' Radford Mayor Tom Starnes said at the start of the meeting. Legislators attending included state Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, and Dels. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount; Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg; Barnes Kidd, R-Tazewell, and Allen Dudley, R-Rocky Mount.
``The success of the entire project,'' Lloyd said, ``depends on financial participation by the state.''
The state has encouraged regional jails by supplying half of their funding. This $32.6 million project got its application in by last March, just before the level of state participation dropped.
How the state provides the funding is almost as important as the funding itself. It is not yet clear whether the localities will have to pay for the entire project and be reimbursed by the state, or whether the state will provide some of its funding upfront.
The localities prefer upfront state money; otherwise, they will have to borrow twice as much from the Farmers Home Administration for the job and be stuck with higher interest payments.
by CNB