Kent’s participation is considered crucial in joint plan

By 2012 King County will no longer accept misdemeanor inmates, such as drunken drivers, bad check passers, small-bore drug users, petty thieves and prostitutes from the 36 cities that contract with it for jail services.

Faced with that looming deadline, the South King County cities of Auburn, Des Moines, Federal Way, Renton and Tukwila hope to build a new regional jail within the next four years to house misdemeanor inmates.

But before those cities do anything, they need to know whether the city of Kent wants to be in on building a facility that would present an estimated price tag at $90 million.

“If Kent is in, we are going to proceed with our work on a new jail,” said Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis. “We have been waiting for the last 30 days for that decision, and it is supposed to come June 11. We will meet after that.”

Kent’s Chief Administrative Officer John Hodgson confirmed that city officials will meet with the five cities on Wednesday and a recommendation will be made to the City Council at its June 17 meeting.

Rising jail costs are straining budgets everywhere and cities are struggling to find alternatives to the county system.

Auburn’s daily average inmate population is 115, but less than a third is housed in the 52-bed jail below Auburn City Hall on any given day. That’s because Auburn, like most other King County cities with the exception of Kent, has used outside jails like those in King and Yakima counties for years to house the rest of its inmates.

Yakima County is dealing with its own overcrowding issues, however, and has said it will not offer cities that option after 2010. Negotiations, however, are ongoing.

Auburn pays $4.2 million a year from its taxpayer-supported general fund to provide bed space for its misdemeanants. King County has indicated it might consider allowing some misdemeanants into the jail but at $135 per day, up from its current booking fee of $109.10. The one-time booking fee is now $208.67 and it would increase, but the Reporter was unable to determine the amount of the increase.

“The county’s proposal puts the cost at over $5.8 million from the current $4.2 million, a difference of $1.6 million per year for us,” Lewis said. “You’ve got to keep in mind that we’ve got some folks in the King County facility that have mental or physical needs, and most of the rest of the population daily is in Yakima. There are no more than 20 or 30 people downstairs at any given time, and that includes some past felons from the King County system.”

The city of Federal Way does not have its own jail but is dependent on contracts with Yakima, Fife, and King County.

“Financially it’s troublesome because it’s an issue housing prisoners and not just for Federal Way,” said Federal Way City Manager Neal Beets. “It’s a long-term issue, but we don’t have a long-term solution. We’ve got an average daily population of about 60 people in jail, and we have to find some place for them to go or get much more aggressive with electronic home detention or work release, which can be problematic. Electronic home detention is not reassuring to some people who believe these folks ought to be in jail.”

Kent looks ahead

Although Kent is not yet at capacity at its 110-bed jail on Central Avenue, it still needs to plan for future growth and annexations, said Police Chief Steve Strachan. Its alternative to joining the regional jail effort is to expand its own jail, which was built in the 1980s. Kent City Council members voted Feb. 19 to spend $40,000 to help the five cities fund a feasibility study to focus on building and operating a regional jail in South King County.

“Our capacity is roughly 110, and we are usually running a little below that because of our work-release programs and home monitoring detention,” said Strachan. “Because we have that level of capacity, we don’t use outsourcing like other cities do. We don’t have a contract with Yakima or King County. We are not facing overcrowding now, but we are trying to plan for the future if overcrowding occurs.”

Strachan added that Kent has made clear from the start that it wants the potential to be involved in any regional jail efforts for the sake of due diligence, but its need is not as urgent.

The south county cities are talking about a minimum 500-bed jail facility, but Lewis said that with economies of scale they would prefer to build an 800-bed facility. When the extra 300 beds are not needed they would be rented out, and the difference would drive down the overall costs.

“If the minimum need is 500, what happens if you have a month where you need an extra 60?” Lewis said. “When we figure that our needs are 500, Kent would be about 135 of those. If we dropped the size down from 800 to 600 beds, the price would drop from $90 million to $80 million if Kent is not a partner. For us, the bigger we can get within reason, the lower the cost is per bed, which is what this is all about. We are figuring all our costs per city based on the idea that there aren’t any other beds rented out besides what we do.”

Lewis said if the facility were built, the total charge would be no more than what Auburn currently pays. The cities would sell a bond on the market for the construction and the cost of beds, which includes a portion for the debt service of the construction, plus the ongoing maintenance and operation costs.

And without Kent?

“It would appear right now that the costs might be too high without that number of beds being a partner to this. Maybe the cities will find another group of cities that takes care of about that same number,” Lewis said.

The cities are still scouting locations throughout the county.

Claudia Balducci, King County’s regional jail coordinator, said the county’s capacity for the two secure adult detention facilities in Seattle and Kent is 3,039, and as of June 4, its inmate population was 2,367.

“Our challenge is to plan for future, long-term jail capacity,” Balducci said. “Our jail population is predicted to grow over the next several years, which means the number of beds available to contract out will decrease. In 2008, we contract out 330 beds to the cities and 220 beds to the State Department of Corrections. By 2012, we project we will not have sufficient beds available to continue to contract at current levels. By 2015, our projections show the number of beds available for contracting would be less than 1/3 of what we contract out today. Our projections show that the county-responsible inmate population will take up all county capacity by 2018.”

Balducci said the county is completing studies to stay ahead of this anticipated shortfall and plan for the future. She said it has also taken steps over the past several years to aggressively manage the jail population and will continue to do so, including:

• Instituting programs like community corrections programs to keep the current jail population down;

• Limiting the number of contract beds provided to outside agencies;

• Planning for future program and jail capacity to be sure that as the jail population grows the county will continue to have adequate space.