FISCAL WOES WON'T CLOSE JAIL

CAIRO, Ill. -- The Alexander County Jail will remain open, say Alexander County Commission~ers Louis Maze and Rollie Matlock.

"We had some financial difficulty paying the food service people who provide meals to prisoners at the jail," said Maze Monday. "But, arrangements are being made for payment.

"The food bill will be paid," added Matlock. "We're working on that situation now."

Alexander County Sheriff Warren (Buddy) Mitchell appeared before the county board last week to request that the food service that provides meals to prisoners be paid.

Mitchell told the board that the service hadn't been paid in more than 90 days. Unless arrangements are made for payments, the jail would have to close.

Piggly Wiggly of Cairo prepares the meals at a cost of $2.60 per meal per prisoner.

"That's a reasonable cost," said Mitchell. "We certainly couldn't prepare the meals ourselves for that."

Mitchell told the board he had checked into food preparation.

"I've search around," he said. "No other supplier will take us on. We have even looked into preparing the food ourselves. But the state will not let us because our kitchen is too small. Even if we could do it ourselves, we could not do it any cheaper than Piggly Wiggly."

With the new county budget in effect Dec. 1, the board may anticipate funds for the coming year in order to pay some creditors.

A spokesman from the county commissioners' office said the county has about $164,800 in outstanding bills.

The board closed the Alexander County Ambulance Service recently.

"We have been losing money on the ambulance service," said Maze. "People who have used the service have not paid their bills. We could not keep it open any longer."

The loss of the ambulance services leaves one ambulance service in the county Independent Ambulance Service, headquartered at Cairo.

In another budget move by the sheriff's department, two deputies were laid off at the end of November.

"We had to let two people go," said Mitchell. "And, our bailiff is working on a part-time basis."

Mitchell was watching the jail Monday. "We're already short handed, and we had a person off sick Monday," he said.

Mitchell, who operates the sheriff's department on a budget of about $281,000, said he overspent by about $20,000 this year.

The budget includes gasoline and vehicle maintenance, food for prisons, additional housing for juveniles and women prisoners, and the staff.

"With the two layoffs, we now have seven full-time employees to run the jail," said Mitchell. "That's 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Mitchell said his department watched the budget closely.

"We're a small county," he said. "We realize we have a budget crunch. We do everything we can to keep the cost factor down. Last year we spent about $300,000. That's still cheap compared to most counties.

"One of biggest operating expenses is that of housing juveniles and women at other facilities," he said. "We house our juveniles in St. Clair County, at Belleville."

The women are housed in Williamson County. "In order to house women here, we would have to hire a woman to be on duty here," he explained.

He added that the housing costs ran more than $20,000 last year.

The Alexander County Jail had more than 600 prisoner-bookings during the year.

"At any one time we'll have eight to nine people in our jail," said Mitchell. "We had 13 here Monday morning. That's a lot of people considering we're a small county of about 12,000."

Mitchell is in his third term as sheriff.

"I worked as chief deputy here before being elected as sheriff," he said. "And, prior to that I was a member of the Cairo Police Department."