New Oklahoma County jail design, land acquisition, and bond funding process moves forward

One of the promises that came with the strong public vote to approve bonds for a new jail in June 2022 was a commitment to more transparency and accountability in the design and construction process. In an effort to provide Oklahoma County residents and taxpayers a higher level of information, the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) unanimously created the Oklahoma County Citizen’s Bond Oversight Advisory Board for the construction of a new Oklahoma County Detention Center.

The oversight board moved forward with two major projects on new jail design: considering land for the new location and seeking bids from design architects. Five land parcels were submitted by private sector actors and two land parcels were submitted by government agencies. The oversight board will consider those seven in their upcoming meetings in the fourth quarter of FY23.

Government agencies still have time to submit land parcels and the oversight board is expecting more submissions soon, providing more options for the new jail site. Four bidders responded to the design architect bids which will also be decided in the fourth quarter.

The BOCC moved to sell the first set of bonds of $45 million to facilitate contracting the design architect, purchasing land and other initial items. Fortunately, the bond market responded positively to the bond sale offering, bringing in an interest rate of 3.23% APR, well below the 4.5% APR that was projected in the initial proposal.

Homeless Point-in-Time count renewed for Oklahoma County Detention Center

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) mandates that all communities receiving federal funds through assistance grants conduct a Point-in-Time (PIT) count, which is a count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night. Each community is required to individually plan and conduct its PIT count on a single day during the last 10 days in January, at least every other year. Oklahoma City conducts the count annually, and this year, it took place on January 26, 2023.

In previous years, the PIT count included numbers of homeless people who were in jail but that count stopped during the pandemic. However, a collaboration between Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Advisory Council (CJAC) data analysts, CJAC member Dan Straughan of the Homeless Alliance, and diversion liaisons imbedded in the jail resumed the PIT count in 2023.

The results showed there were 163 people in the jail on Jan. 26, who met the criteria of homeless at intake. The total jail population count on that day was 1,463, thus making the homeless count 11.1% of the jail’s population. The data also revealed that of those 163, almost half of them (45%) were veterans. To put that number in further context, the total PIT count for Oklahoma City homeless was 1,339 in 2022, which was higher than both 2018 and 2019 pre-COVID.