Salt Lake County finds funds to open Oxbow

The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office has found a way to trim $2.7 million from its budget for the County Jail and will use that money, along with other funds, to open the Oxbow Jail in July.

Streamlining the jail budget will leave the facility with a bare minimum staff and may result in layoffs elsewhere. But by Tuesday, the only staffing cuts had taken place by attrition.

The new budget will allow 184 of Oxbow's 560 beds to open July 1, helping to alleviate overcrowding issues at the main Adult Detention Facility that have plagued the sheriff's office for months and resulted in occasional early releases of inmates.

Sheriff Jim Winder said he is pleased with how the tough budget turned out.

"I am pleased in that it demonstrates a commitment on the part of this office to do substantially more with substantially less," Winder said. "Our ability to still perform speaks volumes about our staff. At the end of the day, we'll make it work."

County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson similarly praised the corrections staff but said the sheriff is simply making the cuts he was asked to, just like all other county departments.

"The sheriff's office was asked to do its fair share," Wilson said.

The council, which controls Winder's budget, never took Oxbow Jail off the table, said County Councilman Max Burdick.

The cuts to jail funding are in addition to about $800,000 in other cuts found by the sheriff's office. The $3.5 million in funding reduction makes up Winder's share of the $14 million in cuts countywide, according to a letter sent from Winder to county offices.

The reopening of Oxbow Jail was fully funded in November, said Deputy Mayor Nichole Dunn.

The changes mean that corrections staff at the County Jail will be very tight, Winder said. But the budget cuts were necessary in the overall picture of keeping the public safe.

Prisoners will not see any difference in the way they are treated, said Sheriff's Lt. Don Hutson. Programs and services to them were not cut, he said.

Some of the cuts will come from eliminating some rover positions, eliminating all overtime pay and replacing sworn positions with civilians, such as the person who sits in a control room and opens and closes the security doors for inmates.