New Crook County jail may hike Jefferson County taxes

The completion of Crook County’s new jail could mean higher taxes for people living in Jefferson County.

The new Prineville jail is scheduled to be finished next spring, and when it is, Jefferson County will lose the money it’s been making housing extra inmates.

“Today we have about 99 people in jail, and of those, 20 or 21 of them are actually Crook County inmates,” Jefferson County Sheriff Jim Adkins said Friday.

Since 2001, Crook County has “rented” space in the Madras facility. The cost has steadily increased, to about $73 per inmate per day.

“So what I’m going to have to do is go back out to the voters and ask them to increase the current operating levy to make up that difference that Crook County is currently paying,” Adkins said.

The sheriff said he’s not yet ready to talk numbers, when it comes to the potential tax increase, but estimates 20 to 30 Crook County inmates are in his facility daily, putting the yearly loss of revenue ay around the $600,000 mark.

Adkins said some people may think fewer inmates means he can cut his workforce, but he said that’s not the case, and he’s already operating on as small a staff as possible.

“We have to have a minimum of three people on per shift just to run the jail at the minimum, and so basically that’s what I’m running now,” he said.

Adkins said voters have been paying less because of the outside funds from Crook County, so if they approve an increased levy, they won’t be paying extra — they’ll simply be paying what it actually costs. The sheriff said voters could also decide they don’t want the higher tax rate, but he said it would be a major setback for the jail.

“We would have to reevaluate which positions we cut, and then we would have to evaluate how many inmates we could actually house with that reduced number of staff,” Adkins said. “I can tell you that even if I had 30 inmates in this facility, I still need my minimum staffing.”

Adkins said he does not want to have to put a cap on the number of inmates his facility can take. He’s meeting with county commissioners later this month or in early June to decide how much of a tax increase is needed to continue operating the jail as it does at present.