Mark Millican
CHATSWORTH — When the Murray County Jail moved to its current location off G.I. Maddox Parkway in 1993, around a dozen inmates transferred from the old jail — now the Probate Court office next to the downtown courthouse — to the 120-bed facility.
On Friday, a ribbon cutting heralded a 160-bed addition with administrative offices, scheduled to open next to the current jail.
“I hope it doesn’t fill up too quickly,” sole commissioner David Ridley said to around two dozen people in attendance. “It’s been a long time coming, because we’ve been running out of room. And it’s the first time in the history of Murray County that all of our officers will be (housed) in the same space.”
Ridley said afterward he was half-joking about filling up the new addition.
“I hope everybody is good,” he said. “Maybe the citizens of Murray County will be good and not fill up the jail too quickly.”
Sheriff Howard Ensley said the current jail is “right at capacity” with its 120 beds, and only two or three inmates are currently housed outside of it.
Ridley was asked if the county will try to house inmates from other counties because of the addition.
“Definitely,” he replied. “We would be paid $35 a day to house prisoners. Sheriff (Howard) Ensley told me the other day we could have accepted 20 inmates from Gilmer County if we’d been open. It is a revenue source, and we do encourage other counties to contact us if they are overcrowded.”
Ridley said the new facility will take in prisoners in about 90 days. Ensley said a “staffing analysis and officer training” period will precede the opening.
Ensley said the jail addition costs around $11 million and construction began in June of 2008. The 2007 special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) that passed during the tenure of former sole commissioner Jim Welch was expected to bring in around $30 million but the economic downturn has lowered expectations to around $26 million, said Ridley.
County finance director Tommy Parker said the SPLOST has a six-year run and will end in December of 2012.
Other projects completed from the tax funds are the library addition and the Judy Poag Senior Center addition. Still on the drawing board is a fire station on Highway 225 North and projects at the Veterans Memorial Park recreation department.
“We’re about 80 percent complete out there,” Ridley said of the parks and recreation work. “We need to complete one pod — which is two ball fields — and pave the parking lot.”
