HOULTON, Maine — County commissioners on Wednesday tabled a proposal to spend money on handicapped accessibility renovations at the Aroostook County Jail due to the cost of the project and the age of the facility.
County Administrator Ryan Pelletier said during the meeting that officials sought to make renovations at the jail to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The first bid for the renovations came in “much too high,” he said, requiring The County to revise its request for proposal.
The second bids for the projects were just as high, he said Wednesday. Pelletier also said that a proposal to do just a section of the building would “basically drain the entire funding account” of $145,561.
The improvements that need to be made include the construction of ramps, widening of doorways, and installation of handicapped accessible showers.
Pelletier and the commissioners agreed that it didn’t seem wise to spend that amount of money on the facility due to its age. The oldest portion of the building, with attached Aroostook County Superior Courthourse, was built in 1895. An addition was built in 1928, according to the National Register of Historic Places.
County Sheriff Shawn Gillen said during the meeting that Ryan Andersen, manager of correctional operations at the Maine Department of Corrections, agreed. He also said they could use $50,000 in DOC funding given to The County during the waning days of Gov. Paul LePage’s administration to do patchwork repairs to make the facilityADA compliant while also explore the potential for a new jail.
Gillen noted that Andersen does all of the jail’s inspections and knows what they are up against.
“The jail is so full,” he said, noting its current population of 120 inmates. “If we were to make these ADA improvements on three floors of the jail, it would cost us even more money. We would have to board a lot of our inmates.”
The jail’s normal capacity is 72 inmates, according to its website.
If carpenters were working on the first floor, he said, inmates on that level would need to be boarded elsewhere because “we would have nowhere else to put them.”
Pelletier said The County explored the possibility of building a new jail in the early 1980s, but the plan was ultimately abandoned.
Commissioners tabled the matter Wednesday pending a written response from the Department of Corrections, but they will be discussing the jail situation at future meetings.
