The Greene County supervisors are poised to place a $10 million bond referendum for the construction of a new jail on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Heidi Kuhl of Northland Securities, the company that has handled previous bond sales for the county, met with the supervisors at their Aug. 14 meeting. She provided calculations showing growth of 4.4 percent per year in the county’s taxable value for debt service since 2015.
The county now has $8 million in bonded indebtedness, and could legally have up to $62 million in bonded debt. Property tax payers pay now pay about 41 cents (per $1,000 in taxable valuation) as the debt levy.
Kuhl estimated a debt service levy of 89 cents would be needed to pay a $10 million general obligation bond over 19 years. That would bring the debt levy up to $1.30 (per $1,000 of taxable valuation).
State jail inspectors have found the jail deficient for many years with no way to upgrade it to meet current jail standards. It has been a possibility all those years that the inspector could close the jail, forcing Greene County to house inmates elsewhere.
“We know that our jail is on grace time. There are other things down the road we need to look at, that maybe possibly we’d have to bond for, like improvements to the courthouse, but the State isn’t going to come in and force us to make a decision on the courthouse,” board chair John Muir said. “I believe from everything I’ve read and conversations with (sheriff) Jack (Williams), with the state, changing of one person in a position could change how our jail is viewed and what we’re allowed to do.”
He said at that point the county would be forced to invest in a new jail or to invest a lot of money in transporting and housing inmates out-of-county.
“In the long term, investment in a new facility makes more sense than paying for transportation,” he said.
Supervisor Dawn Rudolph called a new jail “a big public safety issue.”
Supervisor Dan Benitz said he sees the State “chipping away at the county if we don’t have a jail.”
The supervisors plan to have on their Aug. 28 agenda a resolution calling for a $10 million bond referendum on the November ballot. The question would require 60 percent voter approval for passage.
In other business, Grand Junction city council member Paula Hoskinson presented a request for $5,000 in Louis Dreyfus funds for 68 new filters for the city pool. Total cost of replacing the filters is $8,227.
Hoskinson said the filters are at least 15 years old and have become brittle. When one breaks it knocks into another filter, causing another break.
Auditor Billie Hoskins said all but $8,300 of available Dreyfus funds have already been allocated for the current fiscal year. After discussion, the supervisors agreed to allocate up to $2,500 to the project, but the told Hoskinson to come talk with them again if fundraising for the filters falls short.
County IT specialist Michelle Fields updated the board on election cybersecurity efforts and an exercise she and Tori Gettler of the auditor’s office will attend later this month. The exercise will pose various problems that could arise during an election, such as a fire or power failure, and attendees will work through the process of dealing with the situation.
County engineer Wade Weiss reported work on the resurfacing of County Road E-57 is “going as well as it can given the conditions,” explaining that the pavement has deteriorated faster than expected.
