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Homepage > Budget > How Much Does that Cost? Digging into the Pulaski County Budget
May 1, 2017  |  By Mike Reis In Budget, Education

How Much Does that Cost? Digging into the Pulaski County Budget

nrvrj4 From Baker Renewables

As we all debate the cost and necessity of a new middle school, one topic dominates the conversation- tax increase. So I went to look at the Pulaski County Budget, to find out what exactly we’re spending money on and perused the 2015-2016 (latest available) Budget Expenditure Summary.

One thing stuck out at me while scrolling through the seven pages. In fiscal year 2015-2016 we expected to spend over $2.3 million on the NRV Regional Jail. That’s paid out of just under $40 million in locally controlled revenue. Pulaski County is spending just about 5.75% of our local revenues on keeping people in jail and it’s one of the largest line items in the expenditure summary, after the obvious costs like schools and the sheriff’s department. Currently, we spend about $3 million per year paying off school debt for all of our schools (including Pulaski and Riverlawn elementary schools). As a comparison Wythe County pays about $1.5 million to the NRV Jail in the same period on budgeted revenues of about $35 million, about 4.5% of their budget, while spending $2.8 million paying off their debt.

While the county has implemented a Drug Court in 2015 to deal with some of the issues related to substance abuse and crime, I haven’t been able to find any follow-up figures to show if the program has been effective at avoiding further offenses. What I do know is that many inmates throughout the country are routinely put in jail due to minor criminal offenses that are either directly drug related (i.e. possession of a controlled substance) or indirectly (theft in order to support the addiction).

If we are worried about the costs of building a new school, we should look beyond the school budget and to the totality of our spending as a community. If we can provide alternatives to incarceration that lower our jail population our budget will not only have more space for building schools, but also likely increase as we see greater economic activity from those formerly incarcerated. Virginia, statewide, has a very high rate of incarceration compared to those released on community supervision so the solutions may require work beyond the county. In addition, over 60% of inmates in local jails typically dropped out of high school, so providing better educational opportunities may itself lead to a drop in the jail population.

One other thing that I learned when reading up on the NRV Regional Jail, it has a huge solar power unit which has the equivalent of 272 kw of solar power generation.  This offsets about 2.5 million gallons of hot water, and decreases use of natural gas by 30%.  The project cost about $800,000, of which about half came in a grant from federal and state agencies.  I hope our county elected officials can see the value in planning for the long term with our students as well as our incarcerated neighbors.

I hope to update you all on some more investigations I’m doing on the county budget in the near future.

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Article by Mike Reis

Originally from NJ, now proud to call the mountains of Southwest Virginia home. Recovering lawyer, proud father of two, and husband. Give me a wave if you see me out on my bike.
Previous StoryClean, Green…and Cheap?!
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Comments: 6 replies added

  1. Jennifer White May 1, 2017 Reply

    The “regional” aspect of the jail should be evaluated. What are we County citizens paying v. those in other partner localities? Upon what is that payment based?

    • Mike Reis May 2, 2017 Reply

      Jennifer, as I understand it, Pulaski County, along with the other counties and Radford that make up the NRV Jail Authority pay a per day cost for each inmate. Perhaps there is a small fee to cover overhead, but really to lower our cost we would need to limit the number of inmates and/or the days spent in confinement.

  2. EpictitusI May 2, 2017 Reply

    Isn’t what you describe not the problem,rather a symptom of the disproportionate number of drug cases in the town and county? Should the cost should be arbitrarily cut or should the town and county launch a full court press to shut the drugs out. What would be a solution?

    • Mike Reis May 3, 2017 Reply

      I'm curious if you could provide us with an example of a country that has simply "shut the drugs out." I'm certain that even North Korea, perhaps the most repressive country in the world, has a drug problem. 40 years of the "War on Drugs" has done nothing to stop the use and abuse of legal and illegal drugs, besides send lots of people to prison. The idea is to simply stop treating the problem as one that can be solved by criminal penalties and realize that we have public health crisis. Finding effective alternatives to incarceration will help both lower the crime rate and lower the prison population, thereby saving us all money. Even just changing the proportion of time people spend in jail versus on probation (which Texas did instead of building 8 more prisons for hundreds of millions of dollars) will be a more effective use of our judicial resources.

  3. Epictitus May 3, 2017 Reply

    Exactly,I have not heard of a countrywide effort which has been even marginally effective.Yes,the public health component in drug abuse (DA) is significant and can be included in the neglect of mental health issues systemically. Virginia has a particularly blemished history of neglect. Aside from the more global issues above which are major. The town of Pulaski is a good example of an environment supportive for DA growth. Deteriorating property values, virtual abandonment of any proactive or complaint generated code enforcement and an unwillingness to collect delinquent fines and town charges lead us to a investment opportunity which seems to be too good to be true. Buy a shack, subsidize the rent with HUD funds, collect total fair market rent and depend on the town to remedy any dangerous code violations. Add a declining tax assessment and voila! OK,we have a new manager and a council which seems to finally have decided to act on these issues. Ten years ago we had a council who said they were going to act. Time for neighbors to make them do it? If we can't even deal with one block at a time, nothing will change.

  4. Townresident May 6, 2017 Reply

    Once again, thank y'all for spending time and energy on these issues. It is excellent to receive persuasive information now. The southwest times does not offer free editorials to my knowledge, and I really consider this to be transparent reporting that citizens are missing.

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