Douglas County Board of Commissioners (BOC) Tuesday got blessings from the cities in the county to go ahead with its planned Nov. 3 referendum on a one-cent special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) to build a new jail.

As part of the process required by state law, the BOC met with representatives of the cities of Douglasville, Austell and Villa Rica to give them details of the planned referendum. The meeting was held at 10 a.m. in the BOC conference room in the county courthouse.

Douglasville Mayor Mickey Thompson and Austell Mayor Joe Jerkins gave their endorsement of the jail project. Villa Rica City Manager Larry Wood represented Mayor J Collins at the meeting and promised to carry the details of Tuesday’s meeting back to the mayor.

“Fortunately, we’re building a new public safety building,” Thompson told the group. “We realize the county has to have good law enforcement and we support you.”

“We’ll be with you all the way,” Jerkins said.

Eric Linton, county administration, presented details of the planned county jail to the meeting.

He said the jail will have 1,500 beds and 100,000 square feet of administrative space for jail administration and law enforcement offices.

“Depending on the cost of materials, the jail cost could run between $130 and $150 million,” Linton said. “Our estimated cost of $147 million is on target with what the SPLOST would generate. There wouldn’t be any money left over for other projects on a six-year, Tier 1 SPLOST.”

Commission Chairman Tom Worthan said the new jail will be for the entire county and has been needed for years.

“The sheriff has told us we need it, eight grand juries have told us,” Worthan said. “We know it’s not the best time in the world, but we feel we have to go to the public.”

Worthan said he realizes voters have turned down referendums for a jail two times in the past, once because they didn’t want it in downtown Douglasville and once because the referendum included a “wish list” of other projects.

“We don’t have a wish list,” Worthan said. “We have a list with only one item on it.”

Sheriff Phil Miller emphasized that the county doesn’t house state prisoners for any other county and hasn’t housed any federal inmates since the early 1990s.

“The state prisoners in our jail are those who committed felonies in the city or county,” Miller said.

He said the reason county jails are getting so full of state prisoners is that the state doesn’t have enough prison space to house the inmates. The prisoners are having to be held in county jails after court conviction until beds are open in state facilities.

“There’s more prisoners in county jails today than ever before in history,” Miller said. “The governor’s not going to spend one dime on prisons until the economy gets better.”

Miller said the county jail was designed for about 485 inmates and the jail population was 808 on Monday, “the most we’ve ever had,” he added. He said the jail now has four bunks in each 6-by-10-foot cell.

He said the county is having to farm out 32 inmates to Irwin County to be housed at $45 per day, per inmate. This is costing the county more than $43,000 each month.

“The number being farmed out is going to go up every week,” Miller said.

Chief Deputy Stan Copeland said 750 inmates is about the maximum number that the jail employees can safely handle each day. He said the female inmate population is increasing at a rapid pace and this adds problems since they must be housed separate from the male population. He said the female inmates are living together in open dormitories that make it unsafe for guards. Eighteen of the female trusties live in a temporary tent structure outside the main jail.

“If we don’t provide space, the courts are going to be forced to turn inmates loose and crime will go up,” Miller said.

He said the county is fortunate to have a judicial system that doesn’t tolerate crime and denies bond to violent felons who could get back out on the streets and commit more crime.