Tuesday, June 25, 2024
In a series of recent public meetings, Coryell County officials have addressed how they plan to alleviate a potential $1 million deficit in the county’s jail budget.
The majority of the spending stems from the jail’s prisoner board budget, which funds the housing of inmates outside the county. Budgeted at $2,020,000 for the year, the county has spent $2,052,000 of the funds. The issue was first brought to attention at a commissioners’ court meeting on May 28.
“We’re looking at this is probably going to be $1.5 million over budget just staying with the current trend that we’re at,” Coryell County Jail Administrator Lt. Bobby McClinton said. “We’re housing the maximum number that we can house and staying within the funds, and we’re housing now the cheapest that we can.”
With about four months left until next year’s budget, Commissioner Scott Weddle said that the overall expense for the jail budget sits at nearly 72% when it should be sitting between 58 to 60% as of the end of May. Expenses for the jail are budgeted at over $5 million, which also includes prisoner board, food for inmates, uniforms, utilities, maintenance and repairs, and other miscellaneous items.
“It’s obvious that we are going to far exceed the jail budget unless there are some miraculous findings that I’m not aware of,” Weddle said.
It costs approximately $100 per day per inmate to house inmates in other counties. As of the most recent commissioners’ court meeting on Tuesday, Sheriff Scott Williams said the department has approximately 60 out of county inmates – with 48 being held in Johnson County and 12 in Bosque County.
Since the completion of the Coryell County Jail expansion in April, which was paid for through an existing capital improvement fund, the sheriff’s office has been slowly raising the number of inmates held in-house. However, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards requires jails to leave at least a 10% buffer to avoid overcrowding, McClinton and Williams explained.
“If we're over by one inmate they're going to find us in noncompliance, and I don’t want to be there” McClinton said.
To remain in compliance, the jail can only house up to 125 inmates in the 139-bed facility. County commissioners urged the sheriff’s office to utilize the full 125 to lessen out of county spending.
“We have set an in-house policy at 125 that we will try to maintain,” Williams said. “If we drop below 125, we start shipping back, and if we go over, we start shipping out. Of course, that number is going to fluctuate pretty seriously given court dockets, but we have a plan for that as well.”
Williams said Johnson County also plans to raise the cost to house inmates to $105, but they have agreed to hold the additional $5 until after the new budget rolls out in October.
At a special commissioners’ court meeting on June 4, the issue led to a lengthy discussion between county officials on ways to curtail spending in the prisoner board budget. This included not only limiting the number of inmates housed in other counties, but also utilizing monies from other county departments.
At the meeting, county commissioners approved a budget amendment that moved funds from the sheriff’s department’s budget, capital improvement fund, as well as other funds from the jail’s budget to cover the prisoner board expenses.
However, county officials agreed that this is only a short-term solution to the problem.
“The longer you wait, the less money there's going to be to find,” County Attorney Brandon Belt said. “Finding $300,000 is pretty easy. Finding the next $300,000 may be pretty easy, but finding $1 million or maybe two, three, or four million, you might not find it to be quite as easy if funds are continuing to be expended in the county budget without any eye toward this issue moving forward.”
“Regardless of the action the court may or may not take today, budget amendment number nine does not fix the problem,” County Judge Roger Miller added.
One of the alleged causes for the overspend is the increase in the county’s average intake of inmates, which was not accounted for in the current budget. Weddle explained that the historic number has been at 175, but that average has steadily increased to over 200.
“This next budget is going to be a doozy, because we're going to have to now look and say, ‘is 205 our new norm, or is it going to jump to 225 based upon the new people that are in here?’” he said. “That’s going to be one of those touch points to see what we come up with, but that's what we're going to have to budget for.”
