Cochise County supervisors debate Bisbee, Tombstone and other sites for new jail; public meeting to be scheduled

Cochise County supervisors on July 1 discussed potential locations for a proposed new county jail and gave staff direction to schedule a public meeting to gather input and potentially place a vote on the site on a later agenda.

“The purpose of today's meeting is to provide an opportunity for the board to discuss the possible site location of a new jail,” Phil Bourdon, the project manager, told the board as he summarized a planning study that evaluated six candidate sites. The study’s top-ranked sites were the existing jail property in Bisbee and a parcel adjacent to the County Administration complex on Melody Lane (State Route 92).

Why it matters: supervisors pressed tradeoffs between lower up-front infrastructure costs at the existing Bisbee location and long-term access for county population centers. Supporters of rebuilding at the existing Bisbee site emphasized existing utilities, nearby county facilities that could be reused and the jail workforce already located near Bisbee; others argued locating the facility closer to growing population centers could reduce transport time for police and families.

Bourdon, summarizing the May 2025 planning study by Chin Planning and cost estimates prepared with DLR, said the existing Bisbee site already has utilities on site and…