Jail's tent show may not be over

Sheriff Terry Maketa isn't through with the circus yet.

In 2007, the El Paso County sheriff said the "Big Top" was coming to town before pitching a tent to house inmates outside the Criminal Justice Center.
With that tent set to come down Friday, Maketa wants to build a new one outside the jail in southeastern Colorado Springs - this one more permanent, more secure and more costly.

It's all part of a plan to boost jail capacity in the short term while clearing the way to house more federal inmates, a potential source of more than $2 million a year in profit, he said.

Maketa said he is negotiating a housing deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. He hopes to have an agreement signed by August.

The federal agency operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and has a $1.65 billion detention budget, much of which is spent on reserving cells across the nation for people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to its Web site.

Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency does not discuss ongoing contract negotiations.

Maketa wants a five-year agreement to reserve up to 150 beds a day for ICE detainees, under the condition his office gets paid whether the beds are filled or not.

The tent would house lowlevel offenders and free up room in the jail for detainees considered a higher security risk.

Maketa, who for years has complained about overcrowding in the county jail, said there are few downsides to the proposition.

The Sheriff 's Office would have to come up with about $1.2 million to build a tent with permanent walls, flooring and bathrooms to house inmates round-the-clock.

"In order to house full time, you have to have the basic necessities to sustain health and welfare," he said.

Where the $1.2 million would come from has not been determined, he said. The design, he said, is in "the very early preliminary stages."

Operating the program would cost another $1.2 million annually, including the expense of staffing the tent.

The deal would potentially generate $3.4 million in revenue from ICE every year of the agreement, Maketa said.

"I feel sure we could make a positive cash flow of $2.2 million" a year, he said.

The original tent was erected in April 2007 for the work-release program.

Maketa called it a temporary measure to ease the population crunch until renovations were complete at the building that used to house the Metro Detention Facility at 210 S. Tejon St. The $4 million project was finished this week, and the work-release inmates were moved.

Maketa said the new tent would be less costly to heat and less vulnerable to weather than the 140,000-square-foot tent the Sheriff 's Office leased from AAA Rental.

The older tent was used primarily as sleeping quarters for inmates who worked during the day, and it was not suitable for full-time housing, Maketa said. A winter storm blew in the tent's canvas walls this year.

The Sheriff 's Office spent about $463,000 erecting and maintaining the tent.

Under state law, any profit from Maketa's ICE deal would go to the county's general fund.

Maketa said that would allow him to ask county commissioners for money to supplement his dwindling budget, be it for paying down the office's soaring gas tab or more deputies. Whether or not commissioners give him more money, they'll have a new source of income, Maketa said.

"We're generating revenue to help alleviate burdens on taxpayers," he said.

The Sheriff's Office is also supporting a plan to build a $78.6 million, 864-bed addition to the county jail. Voters will likely be asked in the November election to approve funding for the addition in the form of a 1 percent sales tax.

Should the measure pass, the county would be able to accommodate local inmates and use the excess capacity to court other federal contracts, a common means of supplementing local budgets.

The federal contracts could be allowed to lapse as the jail fills up with local inmates, Maketa said.

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CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0366 or lance.benzel@gazette.com