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A total of eight more jailers will be hired by Lincoln County, following action Monday by the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners. But when the new jail is up and running, the cost to the county won't amount to much, Chief Deputy Dean Sparks convinced the commissioners. Sparks persuaded the county board to let him hire five more jailers between now and the end of the year. Three new jailers are already in the works. The bigger crew will be needed in February when the new $13.5 million county jail opens with a capacity of 131 prisoners, he said. There are 18 jailers now and Sparks said at least 26 will be needed. He said the last two new jailers won’t be hired until November or December. Currently, there are 59 prisoners at the existing jail. The new jail will be filled soon after it opens, because the jail will “aggressively pursue” contracts to hold prisoners from immigration enforcement and U.S. Marshals, he said. “Within a very short time, the jail will be maxxed out with federal inmates,” he said. Also, Thayer, Logan and McPherson counties will probably send prisoners to North Platte instead of the Custer County Jail in Broken Bow, he said. Another savings will come from savings on transportation. Currently, the county spends $180,000 a year to send overflow prisoners in the Dawson County jail and other places. That expense will end when the new jail is occupied, Sparks said. All in all, if the new jail is full, Sparks said the net cost of eight more jailers would only be about $36,000, which not much compared to a gross expense of $216,000 for eight new employees. Sparks said when the jail is fully staffed, 11 jobs will have to be performed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Five other jobs, including supervisors, could be filled five days a week. But he said it might turn out to be necessary for the supervisors to be on hand at all times and if so, two more staffers will have to be hired.
Jail progress For the most part, construction of the new jail is steady despite lots of rainy weather, inspector Kirk Nichols said in his weekly report to the commissioners. But Nichols said work on the roof is going slow. The roof crew did not show up as of 10:30 a.m. Monday, he said. A week ago, Nichols told the commissioners that the roofers left early one day and made relatively little progress on other days. He said the weather wasn’t the primary issue, but that the crew was inefficient. It will be another week before the low roof over the sheriff’s offices will be set, he said. Otherwise, construction is generally going well. The masons are making very good progress on interior walls and partitions. Fire sprinkler lines are going in and glaziers are finishing high windows above the prisoners' common rooms. Several days ago, some television cabinets were installed backwards, but that has been fixed after welds were cut and the cabinet frames turned around. Snell Services of North Platte has a large crew at work, installing electrical equipment and making connections and keeping up with the general construction, Nichols said. More interior work will begin later this week as the inside walls are finished and the roof set, he said. The general contractor, Roche Construction, has said several times the building will be finished by Nov. 24, Nichols said.
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