By Todd Wildermuth
Renovating the county jail to expand the inmate capacity of the often overcrowded facility in south Raton remains the top capital improvement project for Colfax County for a third consecutive year as county officials seek revenue sources to fund the $3.675 million project.
The county commission recently approved an updated Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan (ICIP) that maintains the Vigil-Maldonado Detention Center expansion as the No. 1 priority.
The ICIP — done by counties and cities throughout New Mexico — is a prioritized plan of projects the entity would like to work on in the coming years. The state Legislature requires a project be listed on an entity’s ICIP in order for that project to get serious consideration if it is made as a request for state funding during a legislative session.
Colfax County’s updated ICIP features 13 projects on which the county would like to spend a little more than $16.4 million from 2015 through 2019. The previous ICIP had 10 projects totaling a little more than $9.7 million in proposed expenditures over five years. Although the ICIP covers a five-year period, state officials require local entities to update their plans annually and submit them by Sept. 30 to the state in order for those entities’ legislative funding requests to be considered in the upcoming Legislature that begins in January.
Behind the jail project, the remainder of the county’s top-five priorities consist of the same projects on the previous ICIP, although they have been reordered. The new ICIP lists the following projects, in this order, in the remaining spots in the top five behind the jail: upgrading, repair and replacement of county roads and bridges totaling $3.475 million (moved up from the No. 3 priority it was a year ago); renovation of the county building totaling $655,000 (up from No. 4); constructing a facility to archive, or store, old county records totaling $600,000 (up from No. 5); and improvements to the county airport at Angel Fire totaling about $1.4 million (dropped from No. 2).
So far, Colfax County has put aside $475,000 from its own budgeting for the jail expansion, with some of that money having been used to develop engineering and architectural plans. The county has unsuccessfully looked into various sources for the bulk of the remaining needed funding for the jail project, from legislative appropriations to a New Mexico Finance Authority loan. County officials are now planning to hold public meetings throughout the county to gauge citizens’ reaction to a proposal to institute a 1/16-percent gross receipts tax to raise money for the jail expansion.
The Vigil-Maldonado Detention Center has been plagued by overcrowding for years. The Hereford Avenue facility — built in 1989 — is designed to hold 42 inmates, yet the jail’s population has averaged 51 for much of the year, VMDC Administrator Gabe Sandoval has told the county commission. He added that about 75 percent of the inmates in the jail these days are violent offenders, meaning they are less likely to be released on a bond while they await court proceedings.
A few different expansion design options have been drawn up by architects. The one favored by Sandoval would more than double the number of inmates the jail could house, expanding the bed count to 96, as well as adding a segregation unit, a new administration building and a new intake center where prisoners are processed into the jail. Sandoval added the creation of a significantly larger jail could enable Colfax County to make some money by renting space to house prisoners from other counties — those without their own jails or whose jails are often full — when Colfax County has space available.
County Commissioner Bill Sauble has described the overcrowding at the jail as the county’s “biggest liability concern” and said the overcrowding creates “risks (that) far outweigh the cost of building a new structure.”
The ICIP description of the jail says it will create “a safer work space helping to reduce liability concerns.”
Among the other top-five projects on the county’s ICIP, bridge upgrades on certain county roads have been a topic of concern for years. According to the ICIP, the bridges of highest priority for repair or replacement are the Blosser Gap Bridge on County Road A-11 south of Raton and the Gardner Road Bridge 1.2 miles north of N.M. 555 and just outside Raton’s western city limit. Both of those bridges have been deemed unsafe by the New Mexico Department of Transportation.
Meanwhile, the county is working with a Raton engineering firm to replace the Miami Lane Bridge in the south-central part of the county. Environmental, water, biological and cultural-resource clearances have delayed the start of work on the project, for which the county selected a contractor several months ago. An engineer told the county commission last week that new concerns about several threatened or endangered species of wildlife that can potentially be in the area of the bridge work may create further issues in getting the project going.
Regarding other projects, renovations to the county building on North Third Street in Raton would include water lines, heating system, painting and recarpeting, while the creation of a separate building to archive records is sought in order to free up space in the clerk’s office and other areas of the county building where records are currently being stored.
Meanwhile, the county has recently completed a variety of improvements at its airport, but kept the facility in the top-five in the ICIP after Assistant County Manager Cheryl Navarette suggested it remain there because the Federal Aviation Administration requires continuous improvements to the airport.
