The Augusta Commission had an opportunity to renovate the Charles B. Webster Detention Center in 2020, but opted instead to fund quality-of-life projects and build a prison.
That year, as COVID-19 set in, Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree requested $25.3 million from Special Purpose, Local Option Sales tax 8 to expand and renovate the jail.
The project, called a renovation, was to add “192 beds” and update security, the kitchen and pods at the 1997 facility, according to Roundtree’s 2020 funding request.
The request was eventually denied. The sheriff now contends a backlog of prosecutions, staffing shortages and destruction by inmates have rendered the jail desperately in need of a new wing. The Augusta Commission is looking at funding the project by issuing economic development bonds.
Currently intended to house 1,050 inmates, Webster routinely sleeps between 50 and 200 more than that, the sheriff said. It surrendered three longtime inmates this week after guilty verdicts, but gained approximately 60 in a drug bust.
Jail records showed approximately 1,180 were housed there Monday.
When city department heads made more than $900 million in requests for SPLOST 8 in early 2020, Roundtree’s $25 million jail expansion was among them.
It, as well as nearly $13 million for public safety vehicles and a $15 million new facility for Richmond County Correctional Institution were included in former Interim Administrator Jarvis Sims’ recommendations for $257 million in SPLOST 8 spending he made in March 2020.
But by late 2020, with Administrator Odie Donald II new on the job, the jail renovations were no longer on the list.
Total spending for “public safety” had been reduced to $24 million, but included $12 million to replace RCCI, “based on a 2019 assessment by a Central Services external vendor that highlighted a need to replace this more-than-60-year-old facility,” according to Donald’s presentation.
Georgia Department of Corrections records say RCCI, which opened in 1963, was removed in 1987. The facility is intended to house up to 230 state convicts – which Augusta attempts to deploy as prison laborers – at a daily rate of $22 per offender under a current state contract.
The commission awarded the bid to build a new RCCI a year ago to IPG Inc., of Valdosta.
In a late 2020 meeting, the commission indicated consensus for the reduced public safety portion in SPLOST 8.
Instead it favored including $72 million for “quality of life” enhancements, mainly recreation facilities, $54 million for infrastructure, including more than $20 million for road resurfacing, $25 million for facilities – fleet maintenance and a juvenile court facility – as well as $25 million to go toward renovating the James Brown Arena complex and $38 million for unspecified economic development.
The commission approved the SPLOST 8 package 7-3, with commissioners Dennis Williams, Marion Williams and John Clarke opposed.
Read more: Sheriff invites mayor, commissioners and media to tour Webster Detention Center
