Early voting, jail overcrowding discussed by commission

Shelby County has seen record numbers of early voting, as almost 14,000 people have filed absentee ballots as of Oct. 25. 

With the election one week away, County Manager Chad Scroggins said there is a lot of preparation going on in the different locations, especially precinct 10 and the temporary voting structure that will be at the former Sports Blast location, now the site of the new Shelby County Services building at County Rd. 41.

“As of Oct. 25 have had 13,970 absentee ballots, that’s a little over 10,000 more than we’ve ever experienced in the past,” Scroggins said. “We expect a very high turnout at locations, so we ask for patience in this process as we try to get voters through the different locations.”

He said all hands will be on deck, including staff members from top to bottom, to make help facilitate the process. 

This year’s election will cost the county around $259,000. Scroggins said a “good amount of the cost” will be reimbursable from the Secretary of State’s office and they will pursue that very aggressively. provide us with staff.

Commissioner Lindsey Allison noted that over 600 people have come for walkup voting last Friday and Monday and said our legislators need to know we need to have a different way of voting. 

“It took a pandemic to show the reality that we’ve got to be more efficient in our approach in allowing people to vote,” Allison said. 

“It's the level of service you want to provide,” Scroggins said. “We can say get as many people through there and the rest of you come back tomorrow, but that’s not our way. We are looking at every solution short term we can between Nov. 3. After that is when we will start to look for other ways to vote during the next midterm.”

Scroggins also addressed the issue with the number of state inmates that are in the Shelby County Jail that are past their 30 days and should have already been transferred to the Department of Corrections. There are currently 559 inmates in the Shelby County Jail, which he said was "the breaking point."

“We are in a situation that since COVID-19 started, the Department of Corrections has not taken in any inmates — they are in the county jails,” he said. “The Department of Corrections numbers have declined by several thousand, while in the county jails have increased by several thousand.”

As courts come back into their sessions and are prosecuting and sentencing more inmates, the Department of Corrections is still not taking in any inmates. 

“We are at a breaking point,” Scroggins said. “This is stressing our system. The state wants to give us $28 of CARES Act Funds per inmate per day to help offset costs, but it costs us $50 a day to house these state inmates, so we only get reimbursed a portion of the healthcare cost.”

An adverse effect of this is that when there aren’t enough funds in the Shelby County Community Health Foundation to pay for inmate healthcare, other entities that need money from that fund will suffer, including volunteer fire departments or The ARC of Shelby County. 

“The state needs to do what they need to do and the Department of Corrections needs to do what they need to and that is to take their inmates after being in our jails for 30 days,” Scroggins said. 

Scroggins said he is not sure the order Gov. Ivey put out is actually legal or not and that they will be looking at the legalities of whether she can actually do this. 

Sheriff John Samaniego said that as of last Friday, there were 55 state inmates who have been ready to go to the penitentiary for over 30 days and an additional 80 inmates that are under state supervision waiting to go to court. 

“What's going to happen to them?” Samaniego said. “They will either go right back to our jail or I’m going to speak to the presiding judge to see if we can have a week dedicated to nothing but parole violators so we get them adjudicated and out of our county and to the penitentiary where they belong.”

Scroggins added, “The problem is the Department of Corrections needs to take their own inmates to their own prisons and deal with their own problems. It’s not our problem. Their budget ought to look beautiful, because they've let go of a bunch of inmates they haven't taken in any. We should not bear the burden or expense of the failure of the Department of Corrections to do their job.”

During the county engineer’s report, Randy Cole announced the county can finally proceed with the upgrade to the railroad crossing in Chelsea and make that part of the realignment project for County Rd. 47 and County Rd. 39. 

“I can't begin tell you how difficult it has been to get this agreement and it would not have happened without our resident magician Butch Ellis,” Cole said. “There's nobody in the state could have pulled this off. Butch put in one more last ditch effort and it moved up the chain.”

The county will pay $388,000 for the project to upgrade the railroad crossing.

Two bids will be open Thursday, Oct. 29 for important projects in the county. One for the roundabout at the entrance to our airport at the entrance to Shelby County Airport and Shelby West Corporate Park and the other for a rebid for intersection improvements and traffic signal at County Rd. 41 and Hugh Daniel Drive. 

Cole said the redesign for the bridge project on County Rd. 55 the bridge project is virtually complete, and there will be a public information meeting to make sure everyone in the neighborhood knows what's going on. There isn’t enough bandwidth to live stream the meeting, but it will be recorded and available to view on the Shelby County website. 

One resolution approved for hard steel items for the highway department.

The next commission meeting will be on November 11 at 8:30 a.m.