The 40-inch-by-50-inch window that leads down a hallway into the booking room needed to be bulletproof since it’s considered inside the perimeter, Barlow said. It’s a four-to-five week process to get it made, shipped and installed. Cost is $900.
“We thought it’d be easier to push it back farther rather than rush or squeeze it in,” Barlow said. “I don’t foresee any more hiccups at all.”
The department has spent this week conducting polygraph tests on the individuals who were interviewed for the part-time jailer positions. There were 90 applicants, and either 10 or 11 part-time jailers will be hired at $12.81 an hour, Barlow said.
Cost to operate the jail for the rest of the year is around $92,700, and the projected annual revenue — mainly from an agreement with the city of Beavercreek — is $16,680. The city also has agreements with the village of Enon, Wright State University and the Greene County Sheriff’s Office to house prisoners.
The jail is expected to cost the city $151,000 to operate for a complete year.
“The majority of preparations has been administrative type things and not a lot of the physical stuff, other than the window,” Barlow said. “Just getting things back on schedule, like renewing relationships with folks that do the laundry. We’re plugging away doing behind the scenes stuff right now.”
In early March, City Council approved the move to transfer funds into the jail operating budget. Money saved in the overtime budget, salary savings from an officer’s resignation late last year and expected revenue generated from other jurisdictions using the jail put the city in a position to reopen the jail.
Barlow previously had said there are three key reasons why it is important to reopen the jail: to have an immediate consequence for those who commit a crime within the city limits; the two Greene County jails in Xenia are full; and the time spent by Fairborn officers transporting prisoners to Xenia reduces their overall visibility in the city.
“Everybody’s excited,” Fairborn City Manager Deborah McDonnell said. “For the police officers out in the field who are responsible for handling our arrests, it will make it a lot easier to bring them here locally and process folks. It’s going to save us a lot of time as far as having officers back on the street.”
From May 2010 to August 2011, only 28 percent of arrested individuals were incarcerated for a period of time. For the 12 months before the jail’s closure, that number was 74 percent.
After the jail’s closure in 2010, prisoner transports — both to the Greene County jails and back to Fairborn Municipal Court — totaled 578 trips and 762 hours, equaling 32 days. The numbers in 2011 came out to be 729 trips totaling 817 hours (34 days).
The jail — located in the Government Center, which was built in 1976 — has two isolation cells, one cell with four beds for females and three cells with four beds each for males.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2281 or smatthews@coxohio.com.
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