County looks to make improvements to wiring at county jail

The Ozark County Jail is showing its age.

County commissioners on Monday said they received a proposal from the sheriff’s department to use some of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds they had received to replace the nearly 30-year-old electronic system at the jail.

The county will be seeking bids for “electronic rewiring” at the jail, according to Presiding County Commissioner John Turner, to rewire the jail’s electronic doors, communications system, camera systems and alarms.

Turner said he expects the project will cost at least $175,000, but that commissioners should know more when the bids are received.

“We need safety at the jail,” Eastern District County Commissioner Gary Collins said. “We need to make sure all of the sheriff’s department folks and the prisoners are safe.”

The Ozark County Jail was built in 1996, and it’s not aged well over the last 26 years. 

Last year, the sheriff’s department staff and Sheriff Cass Martin took on several jailhouse improvements themselves, and department employees have again volunteered to help out by pulling all the old wiring to help save money.

Turner said they’ve had some instances at the jail recently where the electronic doors malfunctioned, nearly locking in some sheriff’s department employees.

“It’s all kind of a mess … it’s just old and needs to be replaced,” Turner said.

Ozark County jail administrator Curtis Ledbetter told the Times that the board that controls the electronic doors to the cells and the jail is outdated and sometimes doesn’t function properly.

“There are a couple doors that we have to go in and open manually,” Ledbetter said. He said lights on the electronic board inside the dispatch office that show whether or not a door is open are unreliable. “Sometimes the lights are on and sometimes they’re not. It’s not safe.”

Ledbetter said the improvements would more than double the number of cameras inside the jail and update the system to include higher definition cameras.

“This technology was state of the art in 1996, but it’s way out of date today,” Ledbetter said. “For instance, with the sallyport camera, we can’t tell who is there, and we can’t make out the license plate numbers on the vehicles or anything.”

Turner said the county will publish a complete job detail specification in upcoming issues of the Times, but that they expect to replace the electronic door system, the jail’s camera system and the facility’s communication system, along with wiring and other infrastructure components.

Ozark County received around $891,000 in ARPA money in 2021 and is expected to receive about $890,000 in ARPA money this year.

To date, the county has spent approximately $431,000 of the $1.78 million of ARPA money. 

County commissioners expect the lion’s share of the remaining funding to go to White River Valley Electric Cooperative’s fiber optic internet project, which will help bring high-speed internet to Ozark Countians. Ozark County’s share of that project may be up to $1 million.

Commissioners are expected to meet with WRVEC officials and representatives from the four other counties WRVEC serves on Feb. 25 at Branson. That meeting was supposed to take place on Feb. 4 but was postponed due to a winter storm.

In late January, Ozark County gave ARPA money to:

• $9,413 to the Ozark County Library to make the library handicap accessible.

• $8,500 to Hammond Mill Camp for improvements.

• $83,000 to Gainesville Saddle Club for improvements.

• $86,184 to Gainesville Health Care Center for costs and expenses.

• $57,000 to Ozark County Senior Citizens Center for expenses and improvements.

Additionally, the county spent roughly $187,000 of ARPA funds last year on sheriff’s department salaries, new automatic doors for the courthouse and new water fountains, among other things.

County commissioners say they are also buying air purifiers for courthouse offices.

ARPA money training

Turner said he and Western District Commissioner Layne Nance attended a conference last week in Columbia where there was a lot of discussion about ARPA funding and how the money can be spent.

“We found out they’ve kind of relaxed the rules a little for counties that received less than $10 million,” Turner said. “We discovered there’s a wider spectrum of things the money can be spent on than what we originally thought.”

Turner and Nance spent two days at the commissioners’ training conference organized by Missouri Association of Counties and the County Commissioners Association of Missouri. The training is required of all commissioners. Collins was unable to attend, but he can complete his training via video training courses.

“It was a good conference,” Turner said. “We collaborated with other county commissioners on topics that are important to us all and we were able to share ideas with each other.”

Turner said one of the highlights of his trip was meeting and hearing from Lt. Gov Mike Kehoe.

“I really enjoyed his speech,” Turner said. “He talked a lot about child care for families and especially single mothers. In light of covid, it was interesting to hear about the issue of lack of childcare and its effect on the workforce,” Turner said. “(Kehoe) said that if we can fix the childcare issue, it will go a long way to bolster our available workforce in Missouri, and I think he’s right.”

Nance said as a first-term commissioner he really enjoyed the collaboration with other county commissioners in the state and the resources that were made available at the conference.