Warren County Sheriff Martin Edwards says he continues to battle personnel issues with recruiting, training and retaining jailers and deputies.
“Statewide just in law-enforcement in general it’s, it’s become terribly competitive of neighboring of the bigger towns and counties as they are offering sign-on bonuses to try to track officers out of state, courting in state officers to try and pull them away and come to their departments. We’re just like anybody else. We would like to attract certified officers to save us you know not only that the cost of the training but also to have somebody with a proven track record that has experience, so we get way ahead of that curve bringing them on. Like I said I am I’m short in the jail right now. As you may remember a few years ago we got so short we had to close, I don’t want to have to ever go through that again.”
Sheriff Edwards says they lost 3 Jailers to the private sector due to pay and benefits as well as Deputies to retirement and the City of Monmouth.
The Warren County Board received an update on the preliminary costs for a new jail. Sheriff Martin Edwards has the details:
“Hoping to get a facility built for maybe around $12 million right now, but we’re being told it could go as high as $18.5 million. It’s a horribly shocking number and they told us basically that what materials cost two years ago are now 2.5 times higher than they were before. So, now you’re really stuck and then you got to ask yourself what you they going to be like two years from now, four years from now. Should we have done this 15 years ago when I first started talking about it? When is that ever going to be a good time? Right now, the Citizens Committee led by Chip Algren is trying to determine how much of a sales tax would support that.”
Warren County Board Building and Grounds Committee Chairman Sean Cavanaugh says it’s vital that we have a jail, but those numbers won’t work:
“It’s a huge benefit for the city because if we get shut down which undoubtably will happen in the near future. If they arrest someone, they have to take them to Mercer County the police, do it, not the County people, so it takes them off the road. We can’t have that so the city should be thinking about ways they can assist in this jail project because it means just as much to them, and they’ve been talked to and we’ll see what we get out of there but that being said we do need an affordable product and it’s not easy COVID changed a lot of things and this was one of them, but I don’t think that price is going to work for us.”
The proposed 60 bed facility cost is approximately $18.5 million dollars. The Citizen’s Advisory committee will continue to discuss options for the future of the jail. The Warren County Jail according to Chairman Mike Pearson is over 100 years old.
