County budget could include funds to study building new jail

LACONIA — Members of the Belknap County Delegation's Budget Review Committee are taking a serious look at the financial pitfalls of continuing to bandage a jail that county leaders know must be replaced over the next decade.  

The budget review process began in earnest on Thursday afternoon at the Belknap County Complex. The first of four planned budget meetings on the administration, finance and maintenance departments and the cost-sink of the county jail proved a focal point of discussion. 

The county jail is old and in need of extensive repairs. Consultants told county commissioners earlier this year a new jail would likely cost $50 million, and identified key fixes to help extend the usable life of the facility as long as possible. Commissioners included a few of those fixes in their budget recommendations to the county delegation, who took a hard look at them on Thursday afternoon.

The Belknap delegation is made up of the county's representatives to the Statehouse in Concord.

Budget Review Committee members landed on a figure of about $700,000 to perform immediate fixes and consider getting the ball rolling on an initial feasibility study for constructing a new jail. Combined with about $90,000 for projects in the nursing home, a figure just shy of $800,000 may comprise the capital improvements budget.

The committee will likely include that recommendation in their presentation to the full delegation, who will vote on the county budget in the early months of 2026.

The committee comprises Reps. Harry Bean (R-Gilford), Steven Bogert (R-Laconia), Juliet Harvey-Bolia (R-Tilton), Mike Bordes (R-Laconia), Matt Coker (R-Meredith), Lisa Freeman (R-Tilton) and Charlie St. Clair (D-Laconia). Coker replaces Matt Lunney, who resigned from his post serving Meredith earlier this year.

Some parts of the jail date back to the Benjamin Harrison administration. In October, consultants Dennis Morin and Graham Vickers of SMRT Architects & Engineers said aspects of the jail need to be repaired or replaced to bring it up to corrections industry standards. Eventually, the facility needs to be replaced altogether.

The Belknap County Jail was constructed in 1890, and has been expanded or renovated four times, most recently in 2014. A low-security community corrections center was built in 2018, and doesn’t need improvement. To address the most pressing issues in the jail immediately — like broken windows, seals, and the water and air systems — the consultants estimated between $1 million and $1.5 million could do the trick.

The total estimated cost for a lengthy list of improvements was around $8 million, which, if completed in phases, Morin and Vickers told commissioners could help limp the facility along for another 10 years or so. 

But some of the members of the committee said Thursday from a financial perspective, they’re hesitant to keep throwing money at a problem they know needs to be addressed more holistically.

“I’m a little nervous about this. I understand the work needs to be done. As we know, we’re kicking the can down the road to building a new facility,” Bordes said. “So we’re putting Band-Aids on the current facility at the cost of over $1 million for something we plan on replacing down the road.”

“Band-Aid on open-heart surgery,” Freeman said.

Waiting longer may prove disadvantageous to the county, Freeman said, noting bond rates could be higher then than they are now. 

Bordes is Laconia's mayor-elect, and will take office in January.

A figure like $50 million today could be much more in 2030. On the other hand, debt service today for a $50 million bond over 30 years would see the county pay about $2 million per year, County Administrator Debra Shackett said, which is a steep price tag. 

“It just seems like a very large number for us,” Shackett said. “It made putting $1 million a year into it much more palatable.”  

“The commissioners had a pretty vigorous discussion on this topic, and I think that we were in unanimous agreement that, while these are stop-gap measures, dollar-for-dollar they’ll keep the jail up and running into 2030, 2031, maybe 2032,” County Commission Chair Peter Spanos (District 1) said. “But certainly, the next one or two iterations of the county convention will have to do a deeper dive on this, and decide what the timetable is, what the presumed cost is.” 

If representatives were to begin the process of considering the construction of a new jail, it wouldn’t be a quick one. The community corrections building project, for example, took five years, from picking a committee to hiring architects and engineers to the completion of the buildout phase.

In a brief moment of levity at the end of the meeting, Coker gave Shackett a golf club head cover as a parting gift. She’s retiring after serving for nearly 20 years.  

The next meeting of the Budget Review Committee is scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15, at the Belknap County Complex, 34 County Drive. Committee members will discuss the department budgets for the sheriff’s office, the office of the county attorney, the corrections department and the supervision program.