The Guthrie County Board of Supervisors met for the first time in 2019 Wednesday.
The meeting began with the Board appointing Jack Lloyd as supervisor chair and Mike Dickson as vice chair. The Board then approved several County appointments as well as members of the 2019 compensation commission, a resolution authorizing County Auditor Marci McClellan to pay fixed charges and other claims without prior board approval, a resolution giving County Engineer Josh Sebern the right of final acceptance on road construction projects, and a master matrix for large animal confinement operations.
Finally, Sheriff Marty Arganbright and Michael S. Lewis of Shive Hattery Architecture and Engineering gave an updated presentation on the different options for a jail renovation. The Board asked Lewis to present the figures of just renovating the entire courthouse basement. Lewis’ proposal showed there would only be room for 20 beds instead of the preferred 24.
Arganbright said he has around 100 arrest warrants that haven’t been served because of the jail’s lack of capacity. County Attorney Brenna Bird expressed that the current facility is a public safety issue and does not help those with outstanding warrants, “If there’s no jail time that they serve for breaking their probation because if we don’t have space we can’t make them serve it we need to have that accountability it’s really important. And also some people out there not very many of them but a few are extremely violent and a danger to the public and we must protect the public from those people.”
The Board stated they will study the information given and will make a decision in a couple weeks on whether to move onto phase two of directing Lewis to plan engineering on one of the expansion options.