This year's plans for the Sheriff's Office and Jail

January of this year has turned out to be a busy month for the Vernon County Jail. With a new housing contract between the city of Springfield and Vernon County, we have had a steady stream of paying inmates being booked in and out daily. Although we house for eight other agencies, Springfield is the only one that is bringing inmates on a daily basis to our fine bed and breakfast.

Our goal in 2016 was to average around $2,100 per day in revenue and over the past few weeks we have seen that number increase to around $3,000 per day. With our commissary (items we sell to inmates in the jail) being moved to a small building outside the jail, we have been able to turn that room into an additional dorm that can hold more bunks, allowing us to increase the number of inmates we can hold overall. Not only does this steady stream of revenue to the county help with the overall budget, but it also increases the revenue in commissary sales, which goes directly back into jail operations.

We also plan on making some needed repairs and upgrades to the building this year using the inmate security money. This includes updating the camera system throughout the jail (now seven years old) and adding additional cameras to the outside of the building. Another project we plan to start this year is additional fencing to the outside of the jail in areas that have been identified as security risks to the jail as well as the public.

This year we will make the final payment on the new criminal transportation van that was purchased last year. This van was paid for with money that was made from selling items to inmates in our jail. Once the final payment has been made, we plan to add the lettering "paid for by criminals" to the van in recognition of their contributions to such a good cause.

We also plan to add similar lettering to some of the patrol vehicles that were paid for out of the inmate restitution fund, a fund that is made up of fines paid when people commit crimes. With their help, we have been able to purchase the transport van, three patrol cars, as well as radios and other equipment over the years without using any tax generated revenue for those items.

This month we began the process of placing computers back in the patrol cars, allowing dispatch to send sensitive messages to deputies without the need to call their cell phone each time. The Sheriff's Office already had the computers, but the costs of air cards to connect them to our system had caused us to removed them several years ago. With new governmental pricing for law enforcement, we have now been able to use them once more.

Training will be a new challenge this year as the state now mandates each deputy receive 24 hours of training per year compared to the previous requirement of 48 hours every three years. I am always excited to be involved with training, so I find this new change a good one.

It will be a busy year but we have a good team of people who care about their community and want to make it a safer and more prosperous place to live. I look forward to serving the citizens of Vernon County this year and continuing our efforts in improving the Vernon County Sheriff's Office.