Door construction at main jail finished ahead of schedule

Workers have finished replacing 160 jail doors at the Whatcom County Jail, well ahead of schedule, chief corrections deputy Wendy Jones said.

While mostly finished in July, additional work continued over the next few months and was completed in late September, Jones said. The Northern Light reported last spring county special projects manager Rusty Noble said he expected the $4.2 million dollar project to be completed in February as a best-case scenario.

The expedited completion was due to the county allowing Jones to reassign one of the sergeants to focus on coordinating with construction workers around the jail, she said. The original jail doors dated from 1984 and had become a safety concern. Noble said now that the project has been completed, safety at the jail has gone up exponentially.

“[The doors] were just so old, they’ve been slammed a thousand times,” he said. “We got our money’s worth.”

No projects are currently going on at the jail, outside of routine maintenance, Noble said, as his team had been focusing on the construction of the new Crisis Stabilization Center. Noble and Jones both said they expect the next major project at the jail to be focused on the HVAC systems.

In 2017, Whatcom County Council approved $12 million for repairs to the jail, planned over several years. Council approved the program after voters twice rejected a proposed two-tenths of a percent sales tax to pay for a new jail in 2015 and 2017.

According to a 2016 assessment of the jail by architectural design firm 2 LAST, Inc., a remodel was not a viable option. A county jail planning task force had described the need for a new jail as “critical” in 2011.

A proposal for another sales tax measure to fund the jail was written by county council chair Barry Buchanan in August 2019. According to the proposal, the goal was to get the measure on the 2020 general election ballot, which was not met.

The county purchased land off LaBounty Road in Ferndale in 2013, which had been designated for the construction of a new facility, according to the county website.

Kittitas agreement

Whatcom County still has an inmate transfer agreement with Kittitas County, Jones said. The agreement between the two counties allows Whatcom County to transfer inmates to the jail in Ellensburg to prevent overcrowding at the downtown jail.

The Northern Light reported in the spring that Whatcom County brought back 10 inmates being held in Ellensburg due to space opening up at the jail after the county made fewer arrests and released nonviolent inmates to reduce crowding, amid the
pandemic.

Although there are no county inmates at the Kittitas County Jail currently, Jones said if Covid-19 numbers stabilize, the county will likely begin transferring inmates again. Jones said most jails across the state are avoiding the transfer of inmates currently to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

The jail is operating under Covid-19 restrictions, with 24 beds set aside for an isolation unit for incoming inmates, Jones said. All inmates booked into the downtown jail must quarantine for 14 days in the isolation unit.

According to Jones, an asymptomatic inmate brought Covid-19 into the county Interim Work Center sparking an outbreak in late January which resulted in over 70 percent of the work center inmates testing positive.

Three inmates booked into the downtown jail this month tested positive for Covid-19, but were isolated and did not spread the virus, Jones said. All three have since been released.

The general population in the downtown jail remains Covid free, Jones said.