Recommendations put mental health, jail expansion at top of list

May 03--The team reviewing recommendations from the Blueprint for Public Safety gives high priority to a mental health center and offers ways to expand the county jail. Those proposals and others will be presented to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors at their regular meeting on Tuesday.

The implementation team recommends adding 64 bends to the jail basement, where laundry services are currently housed. It also says the county and city of Redding should open a mental health stabilization center for people suffering from mental illness. The annual operating cost for the mental health center would be $2 million, divided between the city and the county, while the additional jail space could range from $345,000 to $600,000 annually, depending if the county seeks more jail space in the future. Other recommendations for the county jail include expanding the night shift with the housing staff and increasing training for emergency situations in the jail.

These recommendations would hinge on the Redding City Council voting to put a half-cent sales tax and accompanying measure directing how the money would be used on the Nov. 8 ballot.

At this time there is no plan to increase sales taxes in the county.

County Executive Officer Larry Lees said he thinks the city would share some of the tax money with the county to help pay for the recommendations the county would pick up, such as the extra jail space.

Supervisor Leonard Moty, a member of the Implementation Team, sees the proposals as answers to residents who seek additional mental and public health services.

"We're hoping to put the question to the citizens," Moty said. "Now it's their choice. They get to stand up and say what they want if they vote for this."

The proposed mental health stabilization center would act as a 23-hour outpatient facility where a person with mental health needs can mentally reset, according to Director of Health and Human Services Donnell Ewert.

"Sometimes people stabilize while they're in a center either because of a lack of medication or due to stressors in their life," said Ewert.

The proposed stabilization facility would be different from the Community Mental Health Resource Center, which will provide counseling services and mental health assistance for family members with mentally unstable relatives who require court intervention.

Ewert said the crisis center would be only for those in the middle of a mental health crisis.

A similar facility was in place in the county several years ago, according to Ewert, but the details of how the new center would operate remain unclear at this time.

Originally, the Blueprint for Public Safety report from Matrix Consulting suggested the county revisit a proposal to add more beds to the 64-bed Adult Rehabilitation Center to be built on Breslauer Way in Redding.

The initial report suggested the county revisit the idea of more jail beds when funding became available. But Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, counter to his push last year for a larger ARC, said Monday the option to add beds to the ARC would be too costly at this time.

"We definitely need the additional beds," he said. "It would cost more money and delay the project by another year."

Adding beds to the Shasta County jail basement would come after the ARC was built. The ARC will include a centralized laundry facility, freeing up the space at the downtown jail.

Bosenko is glad to see the implementation team recommend additional jail beds, but does not see it as a compromise for expanding the ARC.

"It's a county expense that we need to find funding for," he said. "We need the funding to build it and operate it. I don't see it as a compromise. The (Matrix) consultants basically confirmed or verified the need for additional jail beds at the time and that was not too long after it was decided by the county supervisors to not move in that direction," Bosenko said.

The county considered adding beds to the jail basement in 2006-2007, Lees said, but with the ARC providing laundry services, it made sense to revisit the idea.

The Implementation Team also recommends adding 64 jail beds to the courthouse after the new one is built and the county moves back into the old one.

The costs to expand into the basement and the courthouse would range from $2.8 million to $5 million, depending on how many beds the county determines it needs, according to Lees.

The new Shasta County Superior Courthouse is expected to begin construction in mid-2017. When complete it would free up the old courthouse to house inmates. Both facilities would be on Court Street in downtown Redding.

Lees said the amount of space needed in the next several years is not yet known, so the option for 96 or 128 beds is still undetermined.

"It gives us the opportunity to wade into the option of additional jail beds," Lees said. "We don't know the need at this time."

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