Jeff Whitten, Correspondent

Correction: The budget for the Sheriff's Department was $7.05 million in 2021, not $6.2 million. 

Bryan County Commission Chairman Carter Infinger and Sheriff Mark Crowe say they are hoping to find common ground on the issue of a new jail.

In that regard, both men agreed Tuesday there is a need for something to be done. Both said it won’t happen overnight.

And, both the Sheriff and the Chairman are now waiting on the completion of a study by a county-hired consultant to determine what the next step should be.

As is often the case, the devil is in the details.

“We understand that we need to expand our jail for public safety,” Infinger said. “That’s why we’re working with a consultant to find out what the next steps should be. Can we expand where we are at or do we have to have a new jail, and if we have to have a new jail, where does it go and what can we afford without putting too much on the backs of our taxpayers?”

And building the jail is just the beginning, Infinger said, pointing to Long County, which recently spent $17 million on a new jail only for officials there to reportedly discover they couldn’t afford to operate it.

But Crowe said the issue is something he as a sheriff can’t ignore, or put off.

“I have an obligation to the citizens of this county to make sure people have a place to go when they are arrested and get locked up, and are not put back out on the street the next day,” he said.

The issue, which has taken a backseat in public discourse to the county’s numerous other infrastructure needs, came to the forefront after Crowe, Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney Billy Joe Nelson and Bryan County Solicitor General Don Montgomery went before the County Commission at its September meeting to stress the need for a new jail.

All three men painted a dire picture of a jail so crowded it was putting the public, inmates and jail staff at risk, and Montgomery told commissioners it’s gotten to the point warrants for some property crimes are piling up because there’s no place to put suspects once they are arrested.

At that meeting, and again Tuesday, Infinger suggested a new jail the size Crowe believes necessary could cost as much as $100 million, if not more, and funding it would mean a bond referendum, which, if approved by voters, will mean hiking the millage rate, perhaps even doubling it, to pay for the bonds.

Given the cost, Infinger said SPLOST is likely out of the question, and according to Crowe so is state and federal funding – which both men said likely puts it squarely on the backs of county taxpayers.

Crowe doesn’t dispute that a new jail the size the county needs will be costly, but questioned whether it will be as high as the figure claimed by Infinger. And while Infinger in turn questions the need for a jail as big as the one Crowe wants, the sheriff said his request for a 475-bed jail, far larger than the current 68-bed facility, comes at the recommendation of a Georgia Sheriff ’s Association study conducted two years ago.

“That study said we need a jail to accommodate 475 beds. That would take us out 20 years,” Crowe said, who added the current jail, which was built in the late 1990s, was for various reasons only built half as big as had been planned.

In a way, Crowe also likened building a jail to what happens when a new school is built in a county that seems to add population every day and opens at near capacity.

Build a jail too small, Crowe said, and it will soon be overcrowded and put the Sheriff ’s Department back in the same situation it is in now, trying to put too many inmates in too few beds.

“If they build it with 200 beds right now today,” he said, “and we currently have 68 inmates in our facility and another 68 being housed elsewhere that we bring back to our facility, that’s 136 people there as soon as it opens, so it won’t take long before we’re close to 200 and right back in the same position we are in now.”

Crowe also believes he may have a solution to the issue which could be palatable to everyone. Construct a shell of a jail big enough to suit the department’s needs down the road, but only put in half the beds now and add the rest of the beds as they’re needed. That should be less costly in both the short and long term.

“That way we don’t build half a building and then have to come back and build the other half later on,” Crowe said.

Yet Infinger suggests it might be in the county’s best interests financially to house prisoners elsewhere, and is one of the things he hopes the study will help determine.

Budget disagreements

Infinger defended the county’s funding of the Bryan County Sheriff ’s Department since Crowe was elected in 2020, saying Commissioners have doubled his overall budget since he took office, or from roughly $6 million to more than $12 million now.

“You can’t say we don’t care about public safety,” Infinger said. “That’s the No. 1 issue for us.”

But Crowe referred to budget documents on the county website to note that while his overall budget, which also includes that of the jail and 911, has increased substantially since he took office in 2021, as has the number of employees, it hasn’t doubled, going from about $7.05 million in 2021 to $11.7 million in 2025 – with the number of slots of employees rising from 74 to 126 over the same period. The jail budget on its own has increased by $1.7 million since 2021, Crowe said.

Yet funding for other myriad county government departments, including general administration and fire and EMS have also increased over the same period, as the county’s budget has gone up across the board over the past five years, and those departments, while necessary, aren’t tasked with taking care of as many as 100 inmates a day in a jail with only 68 beds, said Crowe, who also pointed to what he called the county’s willingness to spend on other projects – including a proposed airport.

And while he and Infinger appear to be on different pages when it comes to what needs to be done and when it has to happen, both men say their stance will come down to what’s best for the public.

Further, though Crowe said he’s been advised going to court may be a lastditch option, both officials say they want to work together to move forward.

“I don’t want this to be a situation where it’s us against them,” Crowe said. “I want to work with them, and they’ve tried to work with me. I’m hoping the commissioners and the sheriff’s office can come together to find some solution able to fit everybody’s needs, and I think that will happen. That’s what I want. We don’t want to fuss and fight about it, just let me get my foot in the door.”

Infinger said he hopes the study will shed some light on possible solutions, but said there is no timeline at present for when the study will be complete and its findings made public.

“We want to work with Mark, and the Commission is committed to find a solution, but the bottom line is we have to see what we can afford,” he said.

Whitten is a freelance correspondent for the Bryan County News.