The five-member panel expected to borrow tens of millions to expand Webster Detention Center met for the first time in several years Tuesday.
The Urban Redevelopment Agency, a board created to borrow money for which taxpayers foot the bill, got together at member Bonnie Ruben’s Broad Street hotel.
“You guys are the tool,” Mayor Garnett Johnson said to the panel, which has one vacant seat.
In response to worsening conditions at the jail compounded by overcrowding and staffing shortages, Johnson has taken up the cause of adding cell space for at least 200 more beds and possibly a second “pod” of cells.
“No one in custody should be confined under those conditions,” Johnson said.
The jail routinely houses 20% more inmates than its 1,066 beds allow, and construction of one pod comes at a price tag about $38 million, Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree said.
Former mayor Bob Young has served as chairman of the URA during its prior funding projects including the Cyber Center parking deck, renovations at Augusta Municipal Building and the market-rate apartment complex Beacon Station.
In the 1990s, the government outgrew the law enforcement center at 401 Walton Way, which housed about 380 inmates, and built Webster on a 52-acre tract nine miles south of downtown.
“We’ve been hit by this train before,” Young said.
The initial capacity at Webster was about 556 and a 2011 expansion added 484 male beds.
Ruben and member Isaac McKinney raised a few questions about the proposed expansion. Ruben asked if grant funding was available, if a private contractor could do the project more efficiently or if Richmond County inmates could be housed in other counties. McKinney asked if the government will immediately need another pod after the first.
Johnson said Webster houses “very serious” offenders not wanted by other counties and whom Augusta would have to pay to house.
Webster “reminds me of a horror movie,” Johnson said. “We need extra capacity to keep our streets safe.”
Attorney Jim Plunkett, who has handled the bond transactions, said it will take about 120 days to designate a “pocket of blight” around Webster which allows the government to issue bonds for redevelopment. Interest rates are expected to go down in the coming months, he said.
The local government has no ready funding stream to pay off the debt and intends to make interest-only payments until voters approve a new sales tax.
The local government encountered a similar situation in 2014 after the commission voted to more than double the scope of what were $18 million in renovations at Augusta Municipal Building, adding an elevator tower, IT building and new front facing Telfair Street.
At the time, URA members had reservations about approving an additional $28.5 million bond issue for the project, which was well under construction, prior to voters approving the sales tax intended to cover the debt. But they moved forward, and voters approved Sales Tax 7 the second time it appeared on the ballot in 2015.
Susan McCord is a staff writer with The Augusta Press. Reach her at susan@theaugustapress.com
