WYOMING
Juvenile detention facility closer to fruition
Twelve years after the third floor of the Hall of Justice was turned into a temporary fix for a place to house Natrona County’s juvenile offenders, a better solution is just a few signatures away from construction. On Jan. 27, the State of Wyoming and the Natrona County Commissioners agreed on final contract language to add up enough federal stimulus money to the $3 million the county had saved for a new juvenile detention facility. Completion of construction is expected to be in summer 2011.
The agreement for a 24-bed, 27,699 square foot facility to be sited adjacent to the Natrona County Adult Jail brings $8 million of the Wyoming Governor’s $15 million of discretionary American Recovery and Investment Act funding to the county.
According to the governor’s juvenile justice advisor, Judge Gary Hartman, Gov. Freudenthal was “anxious to replace that old facility,” was aware that the county couldn’t afford to build a new detention center on its own and made the effort to use the stimulus money for up to 85 percent of the cost. Freudenthal also wanted to be sure the county had enough buy in that the local government “was up to your eyebrows” in the project.
The contract stipulates that the $3 million the county has from a combination of unspent Optional One Cent earmarked for juvenile services and savings from the new adult jail’s construction will be spent first. So far, the county has spent approximately $347,000 to come up with a design for the proposed juvenile detention center.
Working with the ARRA dollars adds some extra requirements to what is projected to be a $10.8 million construction project. The iron, steel and manufactured goods used for construction and inside the building will be “Buy American” certified and all the labor involved will have to comply with federal Davis Bacon Wage Rate schedules. The number of full and part-time workers will have to be tracked, along with the hours they work. Using the federal dollars also eliminates any local or state preference for contracts. Pre-qualification to bid is allowed, but the bids will be awarded competitively to the lowest bidder. “We built the court house (the Townsend Justice Center) for $26 million,” said Commissioner Ed Opella. “For this we’ll have a specialist on detention facilities.”
Meeting the ARRA’s federal requirements is the responsibility of the state of Wyoming, so Natrona County will be working with state construction manager Rich Cathcart’s office on a day-to-day basis, including weekly meetings to review construction issues such as change orders. In a previous meeting, Jim Chaput of the state department suggested that a state construction manager may be hired to strictly oversee the ARRA money that the governor is sharing around the state for juvenile detention facilities. Natrona County’s oversight will likely be provided by architects Amundsen Associates and a county commissioner.
The contract also imposes some operational guidelines on the county that Hartman said were Gov. Freudenthal’s choices for the standards the county should use as best practices for as long as the facility operates. Those include never again using the old adult jail as a holding or detention facility and awareness of the four core requirements of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency and Prevention Standards. Those standards include sight and sound separation from adults, not jailing youth for status offenses, not holding juveniles in an adult jail and keeping records of minorities detained in the facility.
Even with the construction money available, Natrona County still has details to work out to get a new juvenile detention facility up and running. A new contract will have to be negotiated with Cornerstone, the company that runs the current facility. The contract negotiations could include whether or not the state’s Department of Family Services will be willing to continue to contribute part of the monthly contract cost with Cornerstone. The part of the contract with the state for the ARRA money that may benefit the negotiations may be the county’s ability to continue to accept, and charge for, out of Natrona County juveniles. The county also retains the option to run the facility on its own.
Opella, who was Casper’s mayor 12 years ago when juvenile detention first became an issue, hopes the new building will turn out to be an energy efficient building with low wattage lighting and a high efficiency boiler to cut down on what are yet-to-be-determined operation costs. “We won’t know until we open the doors, but we’ll take care of the kids who need to be there,” he said.
Carol Crump
3 February 2010
