WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — Marathon County officials announced Tuesday that repairs at the jail facility simply can’t be put off any longer.
Sheriff’s Deputy Chad Billeb along with County Administrator Brad Karger and Board Chairman Kurt Gibbs held a joint news conference where it was revealed that the settling of the foundation and walls has created cracks in the facility and uneven walls and floors. Because of this, the minimum-security area of the jail has been closed off to inmates.
Billeb says the problems have been known for several years, but it wasn’t until now that engineers told them the situation needed immediate attention.
“This is not a new issue, and that’s what the public needs to understand, we’ve been monitoring this for years [to] measure that movement and determine if the movement is critical,” said Billeb. “Until this year, the movement was minimal and they had reassured us that what we were doing is fine.”
Billeb adds that engineers believe the heavy snow from last winter put an added strain on the roof of the jail, causing the situation to become dire.
Crews are already working to reinforce, or “shore,” the building by placing columns throughout the structure. Billeb explained that those columns are also designed to make the building safer for construction workers who will be doing the repairs, whenever that will start.
A special meeting of the county board will be held Thursday evening at 7 to determine just exactly what those next steps will be. That could include an emergency declaration which would free up money for the work to be done immediately by the declaration of Administrator Karger.
The other option would involve stopping the work after the shores are put in place and soliciting bids from contractors through the Requests for Proposals (RFP) process.
“Based on the responses from those [bids] we would hire the firm that’s most capable of dealing with this, and then we would begin the construction process for reading the issue,” said Billeb.
Billeb, Karger, and other jail officials gave the media a tour of some of the areas of the jail showing the wear. In one storage room, the cracks were so wide and deep that light from the adjoining room could be seen through the walls.
Because of how quickly the problem has come up Billeb and other leaders do not have an estimate on what it will cost to repair the damage. During Tuesday’s news conference Karger repeatedly said he had been given some older information, but he knew the figure was “too low.”
Because of the issues, the county has moved scores of inmates to neighboring jails at the cost of up to $2,000 per day. Other inmates that were being housed but also qualified for electronic monitoring were released.
Billeb says no employees have lost their jobs due to the lower population in the jail. Instead, they have been repurposed or given other duties such as checking up on those who were released to electronic monitoring.
Because all of the inmates that were released to electronic monitoring all were previously deemed eligible for the monitors and are being checked up on, Billeb reassured residents that there is no added danger to the public.
