Fulton County commissioners approve plan to build special‑purpose facility and renovate Rice Street jail

Fulton County commissioners on Wednesday voted to proceed with a capital improvement plan that calls for construction of a new special‑purpose facility to house medically and mentally vulnerable inmates and a later, multi‑year renovation of the Rice Street Main Jail.

County project managers and consultants told the board the option they recommended — labeled Option 3 in the staff presentation — aims to pull the most pressing behavioral‑care capacity out of the aging Rice Street complex first and, once the special‑purpose building is online, start phased renovations of Rice Street.

Megan Kaczkowski of ACR Partners, the county’s program management team, said the team chose the sequence "because the estimated cost to address the deficiencies, just for the Rice Street Main Jail alone, greatly exceeds the maximum allowable budget" the county gave staff last year. She told the commission that the study set a consistent comparative bed figure of 3,200 beds to model the options but that the final design and bed count will be refined during programming.

Consultant Roger Lichtman described the cost tradeoffs the team weighed: building a larger special‑purpose facility first increases early capital needs but, he said, reduces long‑term outsourcing costs the county would otherwise pay while work proceeds. "The outsourcing can't be financed," Lichtman told the board, arguing that funds the county currently spends to house inmates in other counties are sunk operating costs that could be converted to capital spending on new beds.

County Chief Financial Officer Sharon Whitmore outlined financing assumptions the team used, saying the county had identified existing resources and potential future streams to help cover annual debt service. For the motioned option, she said, "we would need to increase the millage rate by 0.83, a little more than three‑quarters of a mill" if other offsets are not available; she also pointed to returned TAD (tax allocation district) increments and a projected reduction in a closed defined‑benefit pension contribution as future offsets.