Special Election To Be Held In Walsh County To Build New County Jail and Sheriff’s Office

GRAFTON, N.D. (KVRR) — The Jail here at Walsh County Law Enforcement Center has both inmates and law enforcement dealing with a lack of spacing, plumbing issues, safety, and more.

“What we’re doing now is more or less putting a band-aid on the plumbing and heating, and air conditioning problems. So, they put cast iron pipes in the concrete floor and poured concrete over the top of them, so a lot of those issues with our pipes cannot do anything with. Unless we tear the building completely down and redo the pipe,” said Ron Jurgens, Walsh County Sheriff.

The Walsh County Jail was built in 1975, with a capacity of 16 inmates. But the jail’s limited capacity has forced the county to transport inmates to other jails up to over a hundred miles away.

“I know our deputies in the middle of the night having to make the decision on which facility to take them too. To call them and get rejected by multiple facilities because they’re full and up in Williston, or someplace, Bottineau, or Rolla, or Rugby, or Devils Lake. Anywhere that has space, so it is a real problem that we go through on a daily basis,” said Jurgens.

Five years ago, the Sheriff’s office and commissioners outlined a plan to improve the county jail. They designed a 37,685 square-foot County Jail and Sheriff’s Office. It will have 46 beds, including 22 double-bunk cells for the general population and 2 single-bunk cells for inmates with mental health conditions.

“After looking at the building and doing estimates on how to redo this building, maybe do some construction on it, it would cost more than building a new facility. And so we would still be left with a sixteen-bed jail, and we need more space than that,” said Jurgens.

The estimated cost of a new jail is more than $42 million. It would be paid for with a three-quarter sales tax increase and a 20-mill property tax increase. If approved, pre-planning would start right away, and construction would begin as soon as 2026. But the Sheriff estimates that in the current condition, the jail would most likely not be operable within a year.