MAYOR'S MESSAGE

Craig A. Stough 5/27/05

"Rising Costs for Jail Facilities"

The City of Sylvania is faced with rising jail costs for the incarceration of prisoners arrested within the city limits. Both the Lucas County Corrections Center and the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio in Stryker, Ohio will be going up in price.

As a city, Sylvania obligated to pay these costs of prisoner incarceration. Township prisoners, on the other hand, are paid for by Lucas County with the county taxes we all pay. The Lucas County Commissioners have raised the prisoner housing costs for 2005 to "better reflect actual costs" to house prisoners in the Lucas County Corrections Center (Lucas County Jail) and the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio (CCNO) in Stryker, Ohio.

We have a contract with Lucas County for one pre-trial bed at the county jail. The daily contract rate is $86.12 per day for an annual contract cost of $31,433.00. We have a contract for 3 beds at CCNO. The rate per bed for 2005 increased from $56.60 per day to $63.76. For all prisoners we send to CCNO in excess of the 3 we pay a premium rate of $73.32 per day which is up from the 2004 daily rate of $61.75. The cost to incarcerate a prisoner in the Lucas County Jail has been increased from $81.25 in 2004 to $125.00 per day in 2005. Our budget for prisoner incarceration was $159,000 in 2004 and in 2005 we have budgeted $210,000.

Another change we have been informed of is that effective January 1, 2006 the Lucas County Sheriff's Department will no longer transport our prisoners from the county jail to Sylvania Municipal Court. This will require assigning two officers, probably on overtime, to transport prisoners from the jail to court, wait until the court proceedings are completed, and transport the prisoners back to the county jail. On average, we may be doing this twice a week. This will add about $9,000 to our overtime costs each year.

Sylvania Municipal Court is currently researching the use of video-arraignments where the prisoner will not have to be brought to the court. The court proceeding can be done by a video link between the jail and the court. This is currently being done in several other courts in the area. This will save the time and cost of many prisoner transports. Prisoners would still have to be brought to the court for a trial.