Site plan rendering of the new jail, which will be built
near Exit 104, just outside Monticello
MONTICELLO – After decades of off and on debate over when to build a new jail, Sullivan County legislators brought the discussion to a relatively quiet end on Thursday. The legislature unanimously approved $95 million in bonding to build the jail, replacing the old jail, parts of which date back more than a century.
“I believe at some point, we need to move this county forward,” said legislator Nadia Rajsz.
Legislature Chairman Luis Alvarez, who was with the sheriff’s office for 32 years, said the old jail is inhumane, for inmates as well as the staff.
“These are human beings in there,” Alvarez said.
While the vote was applauded by many in the audience, which included several union workers who will get work under a Project Labor Agreement, also approved in Thursday, not everyone was pleased.
One speaker questioned the “incarceration mentality” rather than diverting the high percentage of people jailed in the United States who have serious substance abuse issues.
Another resident, attorney Ron Litchman, prepared several “white papers” in which he claims to document how the jail cannot be built and financed with the money the county is expecting to pay, including interest on debt.
“We will be extracting $220 million over 30 years to do this, to the exclusion of just about anything else,” Litchman said.
Sheriff Michael Schiff quickly countered that contention.
“Those studies came from the [state] correction commission, not from an architect, not from somebody who had a vested interest,” Schiff said. “Those are the people who tell us what posts we cover, so when somebody says those manpower savings will not be real, they’re real because they tell us what we have to do in our facility.”
The jail design is substantially complete. County Manager Joshua Potosek said the next step is to put it out for bid.
“We have to negotiate with the private sector unions, with the Project Labor Agreement, and that language would get entered into the bid document which could be released sometime in June,” Potosek said. “We’d probably have responses to the bid document sometime in early July, end of July, with potential awarding of contracts in July or August, by the legislature.”
Some savings would be achieved by bidding the project in two parts.
The first installment, of roughly $52 million, would be in this year,
with the second probably in 2018.
