FARMINGTON – Franklin County commissioners unanimously approved entering three into contracts that will provide medical, mental health and educational services at the Franklin County Detention Center, with county officials looking ahead to opening the facility for full-time usage in late March or early April.
Commissioners approved a medical service contract with Med Pro Associates for $133,000 annually, a contract for mental health and substance abuse counseling through Evergreen Behavioral Services for $89,000, and educational services through Franklin County Adult Basic Education for $21,671. All three contracts are roughly in line with what the county was paying in 2007, Sheriff Scott Nichols said, accounting for rising costs over the past 7 years.
In January, Franklin County Detention Center was authorized to reopen as a full-service facility by the Board of Corrections, pending a Maine Department of Corrections inspection and the issuing of a DOC license. In order to get the license, the county would need to have all services in place. In addition to the contracted services, county officials have been organizing different options to bring food into the jail.
Commissioners spent little time discussing the Med Pro contract, as the company submitted the only bid to provide medical service, or Adult Ed, which has traditionally provided educational services at the jail at a very low cost. They did spend some time debating the mental health contract, as Med Pro had originally submitted a proposal to handle mental health issues for $37,000.
With $50,000 separating the two bids, commissioners questioned the differences between the two providers’ proposals. Jail Administrator Doug Blauvelt and Nichols both favored Evergreen, which they said provided the necessary mental health counseling and crisis intervention services.
Crisis intervention, Blauvelt noted, was particularly important when a prisoner had an emergency issue relating to his or her mental health, and Evergreen was located locally at Franklin Memorial Hospital rather than in Dover-Foxcroft.
Nichols said that Tri-County Mental Health’s proposal was very similar to Evergreen’s, but cost more annually.
The contracts will start as of April 1, but would likely be pro-rated for whenever prisoners began staying at the jail full-time, Blauvelt said. The facility’s renovations, which includes transforming a multi-purpose room into a 10-bed housing unit for work release inmates, will need to be complete and all inmate services will need to be up and running prior to the license being issued. When all renovations are complete, the jail will hold approximately 40 prisoners.
County officials are planning to have the jail operating at or under the $1.6 million tax cap. On top of that, the county may receive up to $135,000 annually from the state through the Community Corrections Fund, which provides money for facility programs. Additionally, as the jail will have 40 beds but fills 32 on average, Blauvelt said there was the possibility of taking in boarders to provide some additional income.
County officials discussed the possibility of the jail opening full-time in the last week of March or early April.
