FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Washington County Sheriff’s Office is going to have to scale back its jail expansion project after the bids came in higher than the cost estimate.
The project was estimated to cost a little more than $19 million in 2022, but recently the bids came in at around $26 million. The funds for the expansion are coming from money the county received from the American Rescue Plan.
Washington County Sheriff Jay Cantrell contributes this to the cost of materials going up during that time period.
The original plan was going to add 232 beds in two separate housing units, and they were going to expand their medical suite and courtroom, but all this will now have to be scaled back. Cantrell says they plan to take off the smaller of the two housing units.
“We think that'll be about $7 million in savings overall,” said Sheriff Cantrell.
Cantrell says they will still be able to expand their medical suite and courtroom. He says this was probably a two-year project from breaking ground to moving in, so this is just a setback to their jail overcrowding problem.
Right now, the sheriff says the operational capacity is about 600 inmates. Usually, the jail population is between 760 to 770 each day.
“It's hard on us, we want to get this thing going. We know that 30 people a day moving into our region, so the population of Washington and Benton County and our region is going to grow. We know that our jail population is going to expand along with it,” he said.
Sarah Moore with the Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition says they’ve shown concern all along that expanding the jail isn’t the proper use of the relief funds. She urges community leaders to pause and reevaluate to think about what kind of community investments could happen with those funds.
“We've talked for years at this point at community cookouts and farmer's markets with the community," Moore said. "The top things that people really want to see tackled in our communities are housing, improvements to our health care infrastructure, and economic mobility through job training and access to education,” said Sarah Moore.
The sheriff’s office says since they have changed the scope of the project, they will have to put it out again for bid. He expects to start accepting bids sometime in May.
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