The Reno County Jail Committee looked over a contract from Treanor Architects during Tuesday evenings meeting, and appear to be in approval of the contract.

Dan Rowe with Treanor is expected to be at the next meeting to visit with the committee and also go over the details of the contract to make sure all parties are on the same page. County Commissioner Dan Deming says once Treanor and the committee sign on to the contract, then the item will go before the County Commission, which should pass easily.

Under the proposed contract, Treanor would be paid 85-thousand 500-dollars for their services plus 8.5% of the cost of construction or roughly 170-thousand dollars on a 20-million dollars bond issue. The total comes to just over 255-thousand dollars, which could be more or less depending on the size and cost of the project.

The committee also heard a report on a meeting between committee members and the Department of Corrections regarding the use of Hutchinson Correctional Facility land at the corner of Blanchard and Severance.

They were told to come up with a written proposal that corrections officials could present to the Governor for approval. They ask that specific details of the proposal not be released until Governor Sam Brownback has had a chance to review it. But, it still appears that may be more of a formality then anything else. They would need to work out details of whether the county would purchase the land or exactly how it would work.

Also to be put in outline form is what the committee wants to see in a new jail such as size, number of beds, supervision style and inmate programs. They want that in written form for the meeting with Treanor in two weeks.

Programs seems to be a topic with some residents commenting to committee members that having programs to help inmates might be to expensive, but then they haven’t taken into account the amount of cash the county is spending housing inmates out to other facilities.

The Sheriff’s office is apparently going to soon post the minutes of these meetings online, on their website, so residents can fully get an idea of what the committee is looking at and may be proposing to voters.