By Staff
Hyde County leaders need to get their priorities in order. The county’s new jail is unused because the county does not have the money to open it and keep it open.
Instead, the county is considering renovating and rehabilitating the old courthouse for use as, well, a community center of sorts.
There is no question the jail is needed more than a renovated courthouse serving as a community center. After all, the uses planned for the old courthouse can be housed elsewhere. The jail has one use — housing inmates and detainees.
There is some embarrassment among some Hyde County residents over the fact that county built a new jail but has no money to open it. That’s like buying a new car and showing it off to friends, co-workers and family members who ask to go for a drive in it, then having to tell them you do not have the money to put gas into its tank.
Opening the jail and keeping it open falls in the must-do category. Renovating an old, weather-beaten courthouse falls in the it-would-be-nice-to-do category. Any consideration by county leaders about renovating the old courthouse should come only after they have opened the new jail. And consider this: opening the new jail would result in the creation of several new jobs. Renovating the courthouse may or may not result in new jobs being created.
There’s nothing wrong with renovating the old courthouse, just not at this time. And the Hyde County Board of Commissioners has not allocated any money for the proposed project. It did give the Swan Quarter Service Group more time to raise money and seek grant funding for the project.
Commissioner Alice G. Armstrong voted against the measure, noting the county does not have the money to open its new jail. Armstrong seems to understand how to properly prioritize projects. Armstrong and Hyde County taxpayers should be irate about the new 32-bed jail being empty.
As it has been said before, taxpayers end up paying for a mistake they didn’t make, unless one considers voting for people who didn’t realize they needed money to run a new jail after it was built is a mistake.
Not being able to use its new jail, Hyde County has been paying a lot of money to keep its inmates elsewhere, including as far away as Goldsboro and Raleigh. Sheriff David Mason, in an interview in July 2007, said even though transporting inmates to and from other jails is expensive for the county, it could be cheaper for the county to keep the jail closed.
Even if that’s the case, there is a downside to not opening the jail, according to Mason.
Transporting prisoners out of the county is taxing the sheriff’s office’s staff, Mason said last year. Two summers ago, three additional deputies were needed on the mainland part of the county because of increased demands associated with transporting inmates, he said then.
And if, as Mason said, it is cheaper for the county to transport its prisoners to other jails, then why did the county’s leaders spend the money to build the new jail? Perhaps Hyde County taxpayers should ask themselves if the county wasted tax dollars by building the new jail.
The jail is ready to be occupied. It makes more sense to spend money to open the new jail rather than spend money on renovating an old courthouse recently replaced with new facilities, which were built with taxpayers’ money.
Perhaps some of those leaders fear they may become too familiar with the new jail. After all, their mistake likely will cost Hyde County taxpayers even more money. That’s a crime.