Articles & News

September 17, 2008

Council asked to offer resolution to support re-entry facility

Josh Petray, http://www.thecalifornian.com, 9-16-08

The Paso Robles City Council will consider tonight whether to throw its support behind the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to use the former El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility as the preferred site for a 500-bed, joint re-entry facility to house inmates from San Luis Obispo, San Benito and Santa Barbara counties.

The re-entry facility, to be located at the former boys school site on the same site as a 1,000-bed medium risk facility and 80 to 200-bed fire camp, would be constructed from the ground up and house male, low-level inmates older than age 50 nearing parole. The council’s approval of the conditional resolution of provisional support is tied to a separate, yet parallel issue involving jail funding for the counties who are involved in the re-entry proposal.

In order for the funding to move forward, the counties must provide the state Corrections Standards Authority a package that includes resolutions of support for the reentry sites by all the counties and the city on Thursday, Sept. 18.

According to city officials, the resolution would only conditionally or tentatively support the proposal, since details including programmatic issues, prisoner transport and community impacts must be considered and mitigated and would be included in a memorandum of understanding that would follow the resolution.

Such a memorandum has not been agreed to.

The County Board of Supervisors, meanwhile, has already moved ahead in identifying Paso Robles as a receiver site for the re-entry facility as part of its application to the state for grant funding to expand the county Women’s Jail.

The council will weigh in on the item during discussion following the controversial water rates proposal.

The council meets at 7:30 p.m. at Paso Robles Library/City Hall Conference Center.