Camden County leaders outline steps to address jail crowding, agree to capacity study before seeking bonds

At a county work session, Camden County commissioners and staff heard that the county’s jail is operating at strain and that financing a replacement or substantial renovation will require a multi-step planning process. Courtney Rogers of Davenport & Company presented financing scenarios and the sheriff’s office and jail administrators detailed block-level overcrowding and infrastructure problems.

Rogers said the March 2025 SPLOST 9 referendum includes $10,000,000 earmarked for the jail and that consultants used a planning project cost of roughly $53 million (deducting $3 million for animal control left a $50 million figure for analysis). Using a 5% planning interest rate, she said a 20-year bond would generate about $3,000,000 in annual debt service while a 30-year amortization would be about $2,500,000 a year. “Twenty years is roughly $3,000,000 a year and 30 years is $2,500,000,” Rogers said, illustrating millage-equivalents that she calculated at roughly 1.35 mills for a 20-year plan and about 1.1 mills for 30 years — equal to an estimated $157 or $128 a year respectively on a $300,000 home after homestead exemptions.

Sheriff’s office leaders and the jail administrator described operational limits that complicate capacity calculations. The jail administrator said the facility has 193 total beds and reported about 146 people in custody at the time of the meeting, but added that many beds are unusable for classification reasons. He described specific blocks: Alpha holding (17 beds, roughly 14 occupants), a 10-bed medical area (five occupants), Bravo female block (24 beds, 23 women), and Charlie maximum security (24 beds but 28 people, with several using mattresses on the floor). “When you look at my numbers…you gotta really look when you look at my numbers,” the administrator said, and warned, “there’s just not a whole lot of wiggle room.”

Staff and commissioners also flagged health-and-safety and aging-infrastructure concerns: doors and window sills that have failed, recurring plumbing issues dating to the jail’s 1986 construction, questions about fire-protection longevity, and daily incidents that affect staff morale and safety. The jail administrator said medical and mental-health needs compound capacity problems and stressed the jail is not a medical facility.

Commissioners debated bed-count estimates and planning benchmarks. Participants noted an older local study (2006) recommended a 368-bed facility; others cited formulas such as the former 3.1 beds per 1,000-population standard and said modern planning should rely on operational data — admissions, average length of stay and peaking factors — rather than a single per-capita formula. Several commissioners and staff favored a new data-driven capacity study to determine an appropriate target (options discussed ranged around 250–300 beds) and to produce a concept plan and site layout before seeking bond financing.

On financing, staff and consultants ran scenarios at differing per‑bed construction assumptions (discussion ranged from $150,000 to $175,000 per bed) and calculated a likely bond need on the order of $29–30 million after SPLOST contributions. Rogers said credit‑rating and bond‑market steps would follow only after the board selected a concept and size; she described the credit‑rating process as a 60–90 day step once commissioners direct staff to proceed.

Commissioners recommended next steps that included pulling a year-to-18-month span of operational data (admissions, length of stay, daily population), engaging an architect or jail-planning consultant to produce a concept layout tied to selected sites, and identifying parcels that can accommodate a complex that might include animal control and a 9‑1‑1/EMA center. Commissioners noted about $1 million in leftover SPLOST 8 land-acquisition funds could be applied toward buying a suitable parcel.

The meeting produced no formal vote; commissioners directed staff to compile the requested data, continue evaluating candidate sites and return with a concept plan and cost estimates at a future public meeting so the board can decide whether and how to pursue bonding or other financing.