NORWICH – Despite the lack of a working furnace and a decomposing facade, the 103-year old county jail on West Park Place in Norwich will be back in business this fall when two Social Services programs move in.
The county can afford the move due to a change last year in the New York State Persons In Need of Support program that called for more preventative services for families and less detention for youths. The mandated change came with a chunk of federal and state support totaling $200,000 and the possibility of another $200,000 beyond that. The money would be 65 to 100 percent refundable depending on the region.
“We will get back anywhere from $300,000 to $400,000 for doing this,” Chenango County Social Services Commissioner Bette Osborne said.
At the request of county supervisors, an engineering firm was hired earlier this summer to design office and storage space plans for the jail and attached Sheriff’s Office. The Buildings and Grounds subcommittee recently selected two of the firm’s three recommendations and requested cost estimates for both. In the meantime, Chenango County Board of Supervisors Chairman Richard B. Decker made lawmakers aware of the opportunity to let the space to Social Services.
Decker told supervisors in subcommittee that the move would be temporary, but could become long-term later on.
“It’ll be two years before communications (911 dispatchers) move out of the building. We’ll have to buy a furnace one way or another,” Committee Chairman Robert D. Briggs said.
Supervisors discussed a variety of options for paying for the furnace, from tapping into the jail’s repairs budget from utilizing Social Services funding streams. Treasurer William E. Evans said ultimately that the expense would be subtracted from the county’s 2006 capital projects account.
“Let’s see if it works out without doing anything else inside and just fix up the outside,” Linda E. Natoli, R-City of Norwich, said. “But the sad concept is that we had a building that we allowed to get into such disrepair. You have to maintain your buildings.”
One part-time facilitator of the Coordinated Children Services Initiative (CCSI) will move in next month and, later in the fall, the four-member staff of Liberty Resources for Preventative Services (now stationed at the Eaton Center) will take up residence in the former visitor’s waiting room and inmate dormitory space on the second floor.
Between 12 and 14 public sector employees are expected to eventually occupy the space, forming what Osborne calls a “family center” and preventative services “intake office.” Mental Hygiene Services will have a desk for a therapist and Probation will take up room with two part-time probation officers until the end of the year when its work for PINS terminates. Osborne did not say who the other employees would be.
“We have the flexibility of developing our own programs within state guidelines,” Osborne said. “All of different entities need to be brought together so they can work as a team and not against each other.”
The PINS change has reduced the cost of detentions by “thousands of dollars,” Osborne said, but added that the additional preventative work has added to “the stress” on staff. “This doesn’t reflect less work,” she told the Finance Committee last week.
“We started with the idea to get all of the people on this team working together in the same location in order to streamline the process so it’s easier for clients, and those who work for us, so they don’t have to go from agency to agency,” she said.
DSS is the lead agency for PINS, but Probation has traditionally managed detention cases through a subcontract. At year’s end, Probation will only be involved with PINS youths on probation.