Thumbnail photo by Ken Lund via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License
Though he didn’t speak up earlier, Curry County’s director of operations said complying with a detainer request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be “a lot to ask” when there’s only 16 beds in the jail.
About a month after the discovery of lead paint in its bunk beds prompted the Board of Commissioners to cut the jail’s capacity from 35 to 16 beds, Ted Fitzgerald, who also acts as county counsel, said the county was still waiting on permanent replacements.
“We still have the temporaries in there until we get the permanence delivered,” he said, referring to temporary bunk beds Curry County borrowed from Josephine County shortly after he notified commissioners of the lead paint concerns at an emergency meeting April 4. “The old bunks have been cleared. Maintenance went in there and cut them out. They were metal, installed directly into the concrete, and so, in order to keep things safe, we had to cut the metal and then grind the concrete down…”
County maintenance crews removed the old metal and concrete and installed new concrete to get the rooms into a “safe habitable condition,” Fitzgerald said. He said he’s also working on improving the building’s sanitation, food service and other issues so the building is a more acceptable place to house jail inmates.
The county director of operations also told commissioners that the jail commander notified him of a rat infestation in the jail’s kitchen. He said that this wasn’t a job for maintenance to tackle by themselves and that they needed to call in a professional.
“It’s hard to find the right people in our area in a time-sensitive manner, but I was able to remember the commissioners had entered into an agreement with the USDA regarding wildlife control and predator management,” Fitzgerald said. “I did reach out to the USDA and they responded today by sending their trapper and they’ve got 12 rat traps in the jail… kitchen right now. We’ll see if we can do a shock and awe on the rats and get that knocked down.”
Fitzgerald’s update on maintenance issues at the jail comes after Commissioner Patrick Hollinger toured the facility with representatives from both Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden’s offices.
“They’re trying to help us get federally appropriated funds to the tune of approximately $1.5 million so we can do upgrades to our jail,” Hollinger said. “It’s been long neglected for many years — there’s a lot of deferred maintenance, there’s a lot of improvements [needed] both with infrastructure and with technology advancements in jail command.”
Fitzgerald said he’s also been working with representatives from Congresswoman Val Hoyle’s office on jail issues.
On April 4, Fitzgerald said the jail will eventually have 38 beds when the emergency is over and the new beds have been installed. In addition to agreeing to reduce the jail’s capacity, commissioners approved a $70,000 increase to the capital improvement project fund at the jail to purchase the new beds.
