Jail construction continues

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The dispatch center at the new Vernon County Jail is coming along and will soon be ready for equipment that will allow the county and city to combine communications operations. Once it is completely finished the communications equipment will be able to provide better 911 service to county residents. --Steve Moyer/Daily Mail

Construction at the new Vernon County jail is starting to move into the final phase and work is approaching an end. The three Vernon County commissioners, Bonnie McCord, Neal Gerster and Kennon Shaw, along with Vernon County Sheriff Ron Peckman, and Les Paine, who is J.E. Dunn's site supervisor, and a group of sub-contractors met Tuesday in J.E.Dunn's construction trailer.

Paine said that a preliminary inspection by the Missouri State Fire Marshal will be performed Thursday.

"The fire marshal is coming down from up north and we'll have the captain of the local fire department here as well," Paine said. "We just want to be sure nothing comes up at the last minute to surprise us."

Paine pointed out the asphalt contractor would begin laying asphalt that morning and by the end of the meeting the contractor was indeed on site and asphalt was going down on the street approaching the jail.

As happens with projects of the size of the jail some things don't go exactly as planned. In the case Tuesday it was the commercial laundry equipment that was installed earlier. The plans called for regular, single-phase, 120 volts AC which is the type the installed wiring supports, however, the equipment needs three phase power, which is more complicated to wire.

The kitchen equipment is largely in place and Peckman pointed out a piece of equipment he was especially proud of.

"I'm not sure what that's called, but it can cook up about 30 gallons of chili at a time," Peckman said. "That'll feed a lot of people."

Other new kitchen equipment included a commercial grade electric mixer, a new range and an electric slicer.

"I'm not sure whether we'll have a full-time cook like we do now or if we'll go with a food-service company," Peckman said.

"Either way, we'll be able to handle it here."

One-way glass was installed in many areas of the jail so that jailers could directly view prisoner areas.

Another area for prisoners, had a television with a telephone headset attached to it so that visitors to the jail could be seated in a public area and speak to and see the prisoner they are visiting without either the visitor going into a secure area or the prisoner being moved to a less secure area.

Comments
Respond to this story

Posting a comment requires free registration: