MERCER COUNTY An estimate puts savings from new jail at $1.4 million

Construction on the new $18 million county jail will begin in about two weeks.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
MERCER, Pa. -- A new jail will save Mercer County about $1.4 million a year in prisoner housing costs.
That's what the county is paying to put its prisoners into other county jails in Pennsylvania because it doesn't have room for them at its existing jail on South Diamond Street.
The old jail has 114 beds but the average daily prisoner count is 180. That means prisoners have to be shipped out to other jails and the county must pay a fee, usually about $50 a day, to house them there.
Gene Brenneman, chairman of the Mercer County Board of Commissioners, said that bill is expected to amount to $1.4 million this year. It was nearly $1.3 million last year.
Brenneman and Commissioners Olivia Lazor and Ken Seamans presided over the groundbreaking Wednesday for a new $18 million, 265-bed county jail to be built in Findley Township, just south of Mercer. Contracts have been awarded and construction is to begin in about two weeks.
Contractors will have 555 working days to complete the project, and Brenneman said the jail should be fully operational within six to eight weeks after the completion date.
Total cost
The total project will probably come to $19.5 million, Brenneman said, noting that there are about $1 million in architectural and engineering fees plus some other expenses for equipment that will be required.
The county got a break when the state agreed to let the new jail tie into the sanitary sewer system serving the State Regional Correctional Facility at Mercer, a minimum-security prison just across a field from the 31-acre new jail site.
It would have cost $1 million for the county to build its own treatment plant, Brenneman said, noting that tying into the state system will cost in the range of $200,000.
The county is paying for the project out of a $34 million bond issue borrowed in 2001 to build a new jail, renovate the courthouse and finance some other projects. The state also kicked in a $435,650 grant for the new jail.
Brenneman estimated that county prisoners will fill up about 75 percent of the space in the new facility, leaving room to house prisoners for other counties for a fee.
Keeping Mercer County's prisoners in-county should also speed up the work of the common pleas court which handles their cases, he said.
Although keeping the prisoners here will save $1.4 million in housing costs, running a bigger jail will be more expensive.
Just how much more hasn't been determined yet.
Warden Jeff Gill said it takes 40 full-time and six part-time corrections officers to run the current jail and a projection made several years ago estimated it will take a staff of 70 to run the new facility.
Gill said he would like to have a staffing study done to determine if that number is still accurate.