Jail Renovation Costs Exceed Cost of New Jail
The cost for a jail solution stuns Oklahoma County officials. Reported on NewsOK.
Oklahoma County commissioners were stunned Wednesday at
Oklahoma County Jail
the price tag for a new or renovated county jail — at least $391 million.
Commissioners had planned to bring a sales tax initiative before voters to pay for fixes to the jail. But after hearing cost estimates from the architects hired to come up with a plan, commissioners said they were pessimistic such a project would have any chance of winning voter approval unless major savings can be found.
“It’s very sobering,” District 3 Commissioner Ray Vaughn said. “We operated under the assumption that the renovation would be in the $120 million ballpark. What we see today is it’s not even in the same ZIP code.”
The county began looking at its options for renovating the jail after the U.S. Justice Department issued a scathing report on the jail’s conditions last year.
If the county doesn’t fix the problems on its own, the Justice Department could sue in federal court. Any changes mandated by a federal judge would go on the county’s property tax rolls.
The county hired an architectural team combining Frankfort Short Bruza Associates of Oklahoma City with international firm HOK. A criminal justice consultant firm, Pulitzer, Bogard & Associates, also helped with the plan.
The architects said renovating and expanding the jail to bring it up to code and add enough bed space for the next 20 years would cost $436.7 million.
They estimated building a new jail outside the downtown area on a 50-acre parcel of land would cost $391.1 million.
Curtis Pulitzer, principal of Pulitzer, Bogard & Associates, assured commissioners the cost estimate was as cheap as it could be for the jail to be brought to the proper standard.
District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan said commissioners will work with the sheriff and the architects to see where costs might be reduced before the architects’ final report is presented in September.
Sheriff John Whetsel, who was out of town during Wednesday morning’s meeting, said he wasn’t surprised that building a new jail would be cheaper than renovating and expanding the existing jail because of all the problems he sees on a daily basis.
“But the amounts they delivered today — it’s shocking,” Whetsel said. “There has to be an effort to make this thing affordable. I think we just have to sit down and go back to the drawing board.”
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