Published: February 24, 2007 10:47 pm      

PART III: Weighing the options

With a $14.4 million building that’s less than six years old and already starting to fall apart, county officials are faced with a tough question — where to go from here.

It is not an easy question, and there do not seem to be any easy answers.

“The bottom line is we’ve got to keep this thing working,” Hunt County Judge John Horn said. “We’ve got to keep it working efficiently, cost effectively and we’ve got to keep it working safely.”

The Hunt County Criminal Justice Center has been a thorn in the side of Hunt County taxpayers since it opened for the first time in the summer of 2001 and began to house inmates in early 2002.

Early on, the facility began to experience structural shifting causing cracks in the walls and floors, safety concerns and a lot of other problems.



A waiting game

During Horn’s first Commissioners Court meeting in January, the Court voted unanimously to hire a Frisco law firm, Strasburger & Price, to look at legal options for recouping money the county has spent so far on the facility.

“The details of their research, their findings, at this point we do not know,” Horn said. “They’re going to come back to the table and explain to the Commissioners Court what in essence our cost versus expense is going to be to pursue (legal options), hopefully to some satisfaction, to get the problems over there resolved.”

Horn is not the only county official to put his faith in the legal process.

Phillip Martin said he is looking to the law firm for answers.

“I’m hoping that after the attornies go back and investigate, maybe they can find out what went wrong,” he said.

Some of the criticism for the deteriorating condition of the Hunt County Criminal Justice Center has fallen on the Commissioners Court — most notably on County Judge Joe Bobbitt, who lost in the Republican primary election last March.

“It’s been a political hot potato forever,” said Jim Latham, who was re-elected to his seat in November.

He said the structural problems are not the fault of the Commissioners Court or Bobbitt.

“I think the Commissioners that built the jail and the county judge built the very best facility they could and had the best interests of the people of Hunt County in mind when they built it,” he said. “They didn’t know that this problem was going to occur. And again, I don’t think there was anything they could have done other than stop the problem, and that is what we have to do now.”

While Commissioner Ralph Green said he is not proud of the current condition of the facility, he said, “It is absolutely ridiculous to blame the Commissioners Court or Judge Bobbitt for this.”

He said the county hired experts and architects to build and design the facility.

“We didn’t build the jail,” he said. “We had professionals design and build the jail.”

But for now, Green said the Commissioners Court is waiting for answers.

“We’re still in a waiting mode to see what the ramifications are and the findings of the engineers we’ve had working on the situation,” he said.

Commissioner Jim Latham said the county has hired top experts to look into the problems.

“I think what is happening is an evolving process that we need to go through to correct the situation as it exists right now,” he said. “I think we’ve been fairly aggressive in spending our money in order to hire good people who are experts at making an analysis of what we have — good people who have helped us along with making sure the jail is secure with what we’ve got right now.”

Latham said he has heard several different recommendations from both the county’s engineering firm, Walter P. Moore, and the state organizations about what can be done to help stabilize the facility.

He said Walter P. Moore representatives have recommended that the county construct a wall around the jail to help stop the water from coming in.

He said the Texas Association of Counties has also experienced similar problems at their new facility in Austin and have had a well dug beneath the facility to catch water, then pumped the water out to help stabilize the building.

TAC spokeswoman Elna Christopher said an underground spring was discovered when the facility was being constructed.

Another possibility, Latham said, is putting drainage pipes beneath the facility or digging wells outside the building if the water does not receded.

But before attempting any of those suggestions, Latham said he wants to wait a little longer to see if the water recedes at all. If the water stops, Latham said the county should wait for the jail to settle and then come in and do final repairs.



Could the jail be closed?

But can the county afford to close down the cash-guzzling facility which has already eaten $539,470 in taxpayer’s money since the 2002-2003 fiscal year?

Even with the thousands of dollars a year being pumped into the jail, Horn said currently paying for structural work is less expensive than closing it.

If the facility was forced to close, more than 300 inmates would have to be “farmed out” or sent to other jails in the area at considerable expense to the county.

So much expense that Horn said shutting down the facility would be “catastrophic” to the economy and the county budget and would create “a labyrinth of issues that create major, major expense.”

“It’s catastrophic, especially at the level we’re at right now,” he said. “It would be absolutely catastrophic. The costs would be astronomical.”

Jail Administrator Brian Alford said on average it costs about $60 per day per inmate to “farm” them out them to another facility. As of last Monday, there were currently 303 inmates staying in the jail. With that many inmates it would cost the county about $18,000 a day.

“It’s going to run into the millions each year,” Alford said. “It would be quite expensive for the county to fund that.”

Then there is the wear and tear on vehicles because inmates would have to be driven back to the Hunt County Courthouse for trial, and the county would have to pay for officers to pick them up.

Alford said the jail also brings in some revenue each year through a federal inmate program — which would be lost if the facility were closed.

The county receives between $43 and $44 per inmate per day from the federal government for housing federal inmates at the facility.

Last year the county received $701,191 from the federal government — though that figure does not cover expenses generated by the inmate while in custody, County Auditor Jimmy Hamilton said. In 2004-2005, the county received $781,351.

However, Horn said he was conscious of the fine line between farming out inmates and the cost of maintaining the facility.

“If your cost to farm out exceeded your cost to maintain, then yeah, you’ve got some real issues there,” he said.



When is it enough?

Another tough question being considered by county officials is when is enough enough, when it comes to the spending and the testing on the facility.

“What do you do if you don’t know what to do other than what you’re being instructed to do by the engineers who you’ve hired?” Green asked. “Do you fire them and start shooting from the hip?”

County Commissioner Kenneth Thornton said soon the county will reach a point where it is no longer worth it to do more tests, but he wants to make sure the county has answers at that time.

“I think there will definitely be a point that enough is enough and it’s time to quit testing and take action,” Thornton said. “But I think, by the same token we need to make sure that we have had enough time and have the right answers. We don’t want to go in there and do something that is not the way to fix it. ... Yes, I think we’re going very close to a time and I’m ready. I’m ready to do something. ... (But) let’s make sure we have a reasonable chance of doing what it takes to solve it.”

Commissioner Phillip Martin said he would like to solve the problems facing the jail so that it can last longer and continue to be safe.

“I would like to see us get more years out of it, there’s no doubt about that, but we have to look at the safety of everybody including the prisoners and that’s what these experts are for.”

Horn also said he would like to preserve and stabilize the facility.

“We need to narrow it down, and at some point in time it’s got to start funneling down to get some direct action so that our money is just not being thrown out into oblivion (so) that we actually know it’s going towards an ending point,” he said.

“Can the building be fixed? I don’t know. In my humble opinion I don’t know if anything like that ever gets fixed,” he said.