Wapato Jail what to do with a mothballed facility that costs taxpayers $400,000 a year to maintain.

With the 10th anniversary of Wapato’s completion fast approaching, current county officials, like those who preceded them, are left wondering what to do with a mothballed facility that costs taxpayers between $300,000 and $400,000 a year to maintain. That means the county has spent about $3.5 million since Wapato was completed to keep it safely in mothballs. It’s been so long since the project was launched, in fact, that all of the bonds sold to finance the jail will be paid off by 2016 – possibly before it has ever housed a single inmate."The core issue is that a prior county board, in an ill-advised move, decided to build this facility when it wasn’t clear that it was needed or that we could afford to operate it,” board Chairman Jeff Cogen said."Unfortunately, both turned out to be true.”
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