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Wood County to receive $8,000 jail credit

Wood County Clerk Mark Rhodes, from left, runs through a test of the county voting machines for Wood County Commissioners Blair Couch, Robert Tebay and Steve Gainer on Monday. Early voting in Wood County starts Wednesday. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)

PARKERSBURG — Wood County is receiving a credit of around $8,000 after officials determined they were paying for housing inmates that should have been moved over to state custody.

Now commissioners want a more detailed audit of their jail bill to see if they are due any additional credits.

Last week, Circuit Clerk Carole Jones appeared before the commission after working up a sampling of 15 cases of people committed to the North Central Regional Jail from Wood County in July. Of those randomly chosen 15 cases, there were three found where the county was still paying for the incarceration after the inmate was transferred to state custody.

Inmates are supposed to be taken off the county bill when the prisoners are slated to be transferred over to state custody, as per their sentencing orders. However, it was determined that was not always happening when it should.

“The question now is should we go back to June and so on,” Commissioner Blair Couch said. “Are we owed more credits?”

For the last few months, the commission has been looking at the county’s increasing jail bill for county prisoners housed at the regional jail in Doddridge County.

During the last fiscal year, the county budgeted around $1.9 million to house inmates at the regional jail. A few months before the end of the 2015-2016 fiscal year, the bill had gone from around $139,000-$141,000 a month to around $191,000 in March and $198,355.75 in May with it continuing to grow.

Wood County has raised its budget for the regional jail to $2 million for the current fiscal year, but officials are worried it will not be enough. County officials said at the rate things are going, the county would need to budget well over $2.73 million to cover the expected costs this year.

Commissioners have had regular meetings with local court and law-enforcement officials to determine what could be done.

The sample of cases presented by Jones last week does not cover all of the prisoners for the month of July and the county could be owed additional credits, officials said.

The commission wants someone to audit their jail bill, going back at least a year, to see if there were other instances where the county was billed for inmates when they shouldn’t have been and obtain additional credits.

“We have already determined that with no one watching, we lost $8,000,” Couch said. “The question is how do we dig into this and begin the process of going back every single month to see if we are owed something more.”

In other business, with the closing of the Pressley Ridge facility at Mountwood Park, the county will have to look at options to keep the park funded in the meantime until a new tenant will be able to be secured.

Pressley Ridge officials recently announced their intention to cease operations at the White Oak Village facility at the end of January.

Couch, who serves as the commission’s representative on the Wood County Parks and Recreation Commission, said the main building of the facility has an indoor pool, an updated commercial kitchen and more. In the last five years, the boiler system, a walk-in cooler and the roof have all been replaced. Decking and porching have also been replaced.

The state highway department has repaved roads around the facility.

Recovery Point, a drug rehabilitation center, is looking at a location on Emerson Avenue. Couch said the White Oak Facility could be utilized for a drug treatment facility and local development officials could market the facility for that possibility.

The state is moving away from residential treatment programs and become more community based, Couch said. Ideally they would like to have a new tenant in place by early next year.

“We can survive three to four months with no rent, six if we really tighten our belts,” Couch said of Mountwood Park.

Work has already begun to reach out to a number of organizations to see if they might be interested in the facility.

“It does lend itself to in-house residential treatment,” Couch said.

The Wood County Parks and Recreation Commission will be holding a special meeting at 5:15 p.m. Thursday to discuss the situation regarding Pressley Ridge. The meeting will be held in the Kury McDonough Room in the Judge Black Annex.

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