Warden Touts Valencia County Jail Improvements.(South)

Byline: Arley Sanchez Journal Staff Writer

Costs Reviewed Amid Budget Woes

There are no clanging iron doors at the Valencia County adult jail, locked with metal keys, only clicking ones that are secured electronically.

Floors and walls are gleaming, no laundry hangs from cell bars, no water stands on cell floors from broken fixtures, there are no dark and foreboding blind spots where trouble may lurk, no cells packed with six or more prisoners.

It hasn't been that long ago, senior Warden Lawrence Barreras said, that the jail, under county stewardship, was widely known as a "dungeon not fit for human habitation."

As county commissioners grapple with how to fix the county's budget woes, attention is being focused on whether it can chuck the $3.2 million it pays annually to Cornell Corrections in favor of operating the jail itself. That cost represents one third of the county's general fund.

Barreras said this week during a tour of the jail that he believes since the jail was opened 18 months ago, Cornell has eliminated a persistent sore that had consistently plagued the county.