Adelanto City Council approves lucrative jail plan
Extra revenue promises to erase city's deficit, but facility is close to high school- Victor Valley Daily Press Staff Writer
Posted Oct. 29, 2015 at 3:17 PMADELANTO — The City Council on Wednesday night voted 3-2 to approve a 1,000-bed jail about 1.5 miles from Adelanto High School, shifting the focus away from the jail itself and instead toward the extra revenue and deputies the agreement with private prison operator GEO Group will bring.
But in green-lighting the proposed facility, which Mayor Pro Tem Jermaine Wright said Thursday remains at least 3.5 years from being operational, the Council also fell out of step with the Planning Commission's moral rejection of the plan earlier this month. GEO had appealed their decision.
"We do not need a prison in (the high school's) backyard," Planning Commissioner Joy Jeanette reiterated Wednesday night, speaking to the Council in an unofficial capacity.
The jail is planned on 22.16 acres of land on the northeast corner of Holly and Koala roads, a half-mile from residential housing. Amplifying concerns, it won't be clear what kind of security-level inmates will be housed there until a client is found, and GEO attorney Donovan Collier said they had yet to find one. However, Wright said the city would be notified of the inmate type well before they're brought here.
GEO now has two years to pull a permit and is afforded five additional years worth of extensions to nail down a client. If the company were to back out, the city's revenue stream and the number of deputies paid by GEO will revert to pre-existing levels.
But for a city threatened by a looming cash shortage and which consistently digs into dwindling reserves, the instant benefits of Wednesday's deal in a black-and-white perspective could be articulated by two major bullet points: GEO's annual payment to the city immediately jumps from $400,000 to $963,000 and one extra San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputy is paid for to patrol the streets.
Wright assured the more than half-million dollar revenue boost officially erases the city's deficit, which had long been a mark of the city's financial struggles and had put intense pressure on officials to claw back from financial ruin and close budget gaps. In April, the Council requested city staff to accelerate recovery of $1.2 million of the $3 million it was owed by the Adelanto Public Utility Authority in order to carve down the deficit to about $500,000.
The financial implications of Wednesday's deal grow stronger if the jail is actually built. The annual payment to the city will grow from $963,000 to about $1.33 million. And while GEO had been funding 1.5 deputies — including salary, benefits and vehicle — they will now pay for three. With construction of the jail, the figure grows to four.
Councilman Ed Camargo, who along with Wright and Councilman John "Bug" Woodard voted to OK the plan, said the city was lacking deputies on the streets and had long sought ways to increase their presence.
"This is one way we can do this," he said. "Nothing (else) is knocking on the door."
The city had been operating with the department-minimum three deputies per shift, according to Council chamber talks in June, when officials inquired about the hypothetical consequences of not paying their sheriff's contract.
Wednesday's approval also guaranteed GEO would pay the city the per-bed per-Diem for all three of its facilities here, where before they were only paying for one. Wright said many residents mistakenly believed the city was being compensated for all of GEO's facilities: Desert View, Adelanto East and Adelanto West.
Wright also said GEO was agreeable to move the proposed jail to another location if circumstances warranted such a move.
But despite the windfall to city coffers and promise of added public safety, the approval was not greeted as warmly by most residents as the Council's decisions typically have been, signalling one of the few times the majority Council was willing to break away from its residents' inclinations.
Mayor Rich Kerr was staunchly against the plan, saying he "refused" to have a jail that close to the high school and to the city's airport (about a half-mile away), also calling the proximity a potential hindrance to efforts to further develop the airport.
"I've put too much work in to take the easy way out," he said.
Addressing the long-held stigma that jails in the city would actually harm public safety, both Councilman Charley Glasper and Camargo said there was no indication that any of the facilities here had been, or would be, detrimental to the public.
Shea Johnson may be reached at 760-955-5368 or SJohnson@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DP_Shea.
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