Early recommendations for a new jail in Warren County point toward a facility with triple the capacity, triple the staff and a hefty overall property tax increase to pay for construction and operations.

A five-member group has been meeting with professional jail planners for nearly a year and a final report is due in March.

Monday, supervisors were updated by County Administrator John Smith and District 1 Supervisor David McDonald, who serve on the panel along with Sheriff Martin Pace, Undersheriff Jeff Riggs and Purchasing Agent Tonga Vinson.

Indications are also that no tract in the city is available that would accommodate a 130,000-square-foot facility with at least 350 beds or a staff now budgeted at 20 employees that would grow to 63 in a new jail’s first year of operation, then to 80. A decision on where to build a new jail, also a major factor in the process, was not discussed.

The information was provided Monday after Smith and McDonald were asked how Colorado-based Voorhis/Robertson Justice Services Inc. was progressing. The board hired the firm in August 2008 to guide the size, location and features of a new jail to the county’s needs.

A public referendum on a tax hike is becoming a stronger possibility to fund the facility, Smith said, adding as much as 2.3 extra mills might be necessary to cover the extra $1 million or so in salary to pay the additional staff. State law allows county boards to raise general fund millage by 10 percent in any given year without calling an election.

At present values, 1 mill raises $510,131 in taxes for the county. Average annual salaries of jail employees, now about $20,200, would have to go up, as would funding sources beyond the state-set ceiling on tax hikes to pay the expanded staff. A 2.79-mill increase at the start of the 2008-09 fiscal year resulted in a jump of about $28 in a typical residential bill.

Issuing bonds to finance construction has not been ruled out. Construction costs for Mississippi jails hover around $200 a square foot, thus a $26 million facility, McDonald said, citing figures from meetings with the study’s authors, led by Dave Voorhis, the firm’s president and principal consultant. Variables in construction, such as economic conditions and lay of the land where the county decides to build it, could push the price much higher.

The Voorhis firm was chosen from three proposals and is to be paid $139,908 for conducting the study.

Talks between the committee and the local judiciary are tentatively set for next month, McDonald said, to gather input on plans to have a room that can be used as a secondary courtroom and additional office and visiting space. Capacity would be expandable past 350 beds, McDonald said, but would essentially take a “room to grow” path — depending on the population, he said.

“We don’t want to plan for more based on that and go ahead and build it now,” McDonald said.

When reached, Pace declined to speak to specific totals on how many beds and employees a new jail would have — but stressed the logic of having more people to watch more prisoners.

“It is expected that if your jail population increases, your staff has to increase,” Pace said, adding plans are shaping up for “a new management philosophy” for the facility which would feature more “open space” over the style of the current jail, built in 1907 and renovated just once, in the 1970s.

Location is a logical next phase if the study extends into 2010, as the committee has not vetted any sites up to now, Pace said

The current jail’s 128 beds are consistently full with pretrial detainees, which has prompted detainees of the City of Vicksburg, which doesn’t own a jail and pays per-day fees, to be taken to other jails for several years. Most end up in Issaquena County, though city prisoners have been housed in jails up to 100 miles away. Costs to city coffers has been pegged at about $500,000 more than would be spent if space were available in a local jail.

Former Mayor Laurence Leyens said the city would entertain talks on being a partner in a new jail. Mayor Paul Winfield, also a former board attorney, has not addressed the topic.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com