Kane Co. sheriff, challenger support jail expansion, but not a tax increase

There's no doubt in the minds of Kane County Sheriff Pat Perez and his challenger Don Kramer county officials made a big mistake in building a new jail that was too small.

While both candidates say the expansion spaces of the jail must be opened as soon as possible, neither was willing to commit support for a tax increase to fund either the construction or additional staffing.

Preliminary estimates put the construction costs of expanding the jail at about $5 million, plus an additional $2 million for staffing. It's unclear if the county could scrape together those funds to make the expansion a reality without a tax increase.

"I'm against any tax increase," said Kramer, the Republican challenger. "I'm hoping the county board will look into the reserve accounts, the RTA account, and we might even be able to get some grant money. The public is not going to stand for a tax increase. Frankly, it gives me a migraine headache to think about what it's going to cost now versus what it would've cost (when the jail was built). I don't know what the solution was at that time, but I'm sure it wouldn't have cost $5 million to build it out."

Kramer also criticized Perez for not having a louder voice about the jail being too small at the time the plans were developed.

"I don't recall the sheriff ever stepping up," Kramer said.

"I'm on record back in 2006 saying this is not going to be big enough," Perez said. "At that time, our average daily population in the old jail was 677 inmates. To give me a 640-bed jail, I was destined to fail."

Perez said he's concerned about the possibility of inmates trying to escape during an expansion of the new jail. That's just another reason why building the jail to full capacity to begin with would've been the best idea, he said.

"It didn't make a lot of sense to me to spend $55 million of taxpayer money and then turn around and still have to outsource," Perez said.

The county will spend up to $90,000 in September to house overflow inmates in jails in other counties because the new jail is too small, Perez said. All the county's efforts to shrink the size of the jail population through additional bond calls and electronic home monitoring will prove fruitless, Perez predicted.

"Even implementing all those measures, we're still overflowing," Perez said. "It just has to do with the number of people that live in this county."

Perez said he "would prefer not to have a tax increase" to fund a jail expansion.

Perez doesn't believe opening the additional spaces needs to cost $7 million. He said he favors creating a dormitory approach with bunk beds bolted to an open floor plan to house inmates with no history of violence or behavior problems. Perez said that would open up cell space in the existing jail to rent to federal law enforcement agencies that could eventually make the jail a moneymaker.