How much will your city get from the sale of Hampton Roads Regional Jail?
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — The Hampton Roads Regional Jail, which closed in late March, could soon be under new ownership. The city of Portsmouth is expected to buy the facility for $31.5 million.
Hampton Roads Regional Jail shuts its doors
The city councils of Portsmouth, Norfolk, Chesapeake and Newport News all voted unanimously in favor of the sale Tuesday. They are four of the five cities that make up the Hampton Roads Regional Jail Authority.
Hampton, also a part of the authority, will also have to approve the sale.
Only four of the five cities will receive money from the sale — and it will not be split evenly. Norfolk will receive $11,569,335, Newport News will get $9,255,468, Hampton will walk away with $8,098,535 and Chesapeake will get $2,576,662.
Portsmouth will not make any money because their would-be profits were calculated into the sale price.
“The formula was based on how long a city was with the authority and the number of beds they had contracted over the period of time,” said Bob Geis, chairman of the Hampton Roads Regional Jail Authority.
The sale of the facility does not mean that the authority will be immediately dissolved. It will remain in existence for two years to manage records and remaining employees.
“That’s a requirement,” Geis said, “in case there’s lawsuits or paperwork required.”
There are four full-time employees and one part-time employee who will still work for the Jail Authority. Part of the deal with Portsmouth requires that the city provide an office for those employees to work out of. Geis said the employees will still work out of the jail, just not in the main office.
The authority itself is slimmed down as well. Elected officials and sheriffs will no longer participate in regular meetings. Instead, only the city planner — or other appointed representative — will attend them.
At the beginning of the year the facility held $17.45 million in debt and more than $33 million in its account. After paying that debt and allocating funds for fees associated with the sale of the facility, including purchasing a new roof for $4.6 million, the jail authority will have about $5 million for their operational budget for the next two years.
“We didn’t want to wait to the sale, in which case there could be some leakage from water and things like [that],” Geis told 10 On Your Side when asked about the roof repairs. “It wouldn’t be fair to Portsmouth or whoever was going to buy it, so the authority thought it was the right thing to do to go ahead and contract that out ahead of time, which we did.”
Geis said those repairs are almost complete.
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