If Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond were the tender sort, he might feel hurt at how often Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger says he'd rather spend money on anything else but the Hamilton County jail.
The sheriff gets it, though. The jail is not a popular subject. Housing inmates costs lots of money, and it's money the public would rather see spent on schools, paving or even sewage treatment.
The jail, though, is the county's responsibility, and this week the county took the first steps toward a permanent solution. We believe the steps were prudent ones.
When the Hamilton County Commission passed a de facto tax increase - by voting to keep the county millage rate where it had been instead of lowering it to adjust to higher property appraisals - it was expected some $20-$30 million from a forthcoming bond issue will be designated for a 128-bed expansion at the Silverdale Correctional Facility.
In the same meeting, the commission voted to end Silverdale's life as a county workhouse (for convicted misdemeanants and short-term felons), transfer control of the facility to the sheriff's office and enter into a new working agreement with CoreCivic (the former Corrections Corporation of America), which operates Silverdale.
"There's very few counties where there's a workhouse that comes under the mayor's office," Coppinger said last month.
A year ago, the county asked private correctional companies to submit plans for a new jail, which would be a combined jail and workhouse with 1,800 beds at the Silverdale site. Coppinger estimated at the time the cost of such a facility - replacing the 41-year-old jail at Sixth and Walnut streets - would be between $50 and $75 million.
When the county mayor received a county task force study in July that put the cost at up to $132 million, he had sticker shock. To build such a facility would require a tax hike three times the amount the commission voted to authorize this week.
A Silverdale expansion, though, will alleviate overcrowding at the downtown jail, where some inmates have had to sleep without mattresses and some in shower stalls, where it's been difficult to maintain a full staff, and where the Tennessee Corrections Institute said minimum state standards had failed to be met in six of seven recent years.
In addition, the expansion and the transfer of control will allow Hammond more flexibility in how he uses the jail and the former workhouse.
The jail is supposed to house 505 inmates. On some nights in the past few years, it has had more than 600. It was built in 1976 to house 275 inmates but was expanded in 1993 to hold more than 500. That, at the time, was expected to meet the county's needs for 25 years. But it was overcrowded within five years and - 24 years into those 25 years - has remained so.
Meanwhile, Silverdale has about 1,200 beds. A July 2016 study said the county could be expected to have a steady 1,600 daily inmates for around four years, but the figure would rise to approximately 1,800 by 2031. It recommended tearing down parts of Silverdale erected in the 1980s but keeping newer portions that included 660 beds. New construction then would add 1,200 beds.
That study said the facility would house pretrial and convicted inmates, would have inmate processing and booking areas and would have two courtrooms with video capability.
The county task force's study that revealed a new jail's sticker price was the ultimate determiner. No more money will be spent to Band-Aid the jail, and the move to Silverdale will be an incremental one. Plans beyond the initial 128-bed expansion there are only speculative and the timetable for further moves unknown, county officials said.
While Hamilton County residents can appreciate county commissioners not needing to vote for a tax increase three times the size of this week's rise (as a new jail would command), Hammond also has said there is another reason for not spending too much on one corrections facility too soon.
Recent nationwide initiatives, he said, have suggested moving mental health inmates out of correctional facilities. If or when that might be done and how it might be handled have not been discussed, but such a proposal does have the potential for reducing the overall number of county inmates.
In the meantime, the jail, Hammond said at a news conference last week, is "[structurally] rotten to the core" and "cannot be rehabilitated."
Thus, the Silverdale solution seems to be one that, at least for the moment, is golden.