Several options for the future of the Guthrie County Jail were presented to the County Board of Supervisors this week.

Michael S. Lewis of Shive Hattery Architecture & Engineering recommended that the County build a 14,600-square-foot-facility onto the courthouse site to include 24 beds and four intake holding cells, for an estimated cost of $7,225,000. The other options were to build an 11,750-square-foot-facility onto the courthouse and keep administration in the existing space, which would require Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades to the courthouse, at an estimated cost of $7.65 million. The third option is to build a facility at an entirely new site for $6.85 million, which doesn’t include the cost of land acquisition. The fourth option is to turn the jail into a holding facility for court proceedings, and transport all other inmates to surrounding counties.

The jail was originally built in 1963 with ten cells. This facility does not meet the current demand of inmates or consider their safety and that of the jail and office staff, according to Sheriff Marty Arganbright, “The option of doing nothing is what we’ve done for several years, so it’s really not an option anymore. We need to keep moving forward, we need to show the state that we’re moving forward.”

The Board asked Lewis to figure out the costs of a fifth option of not building any new structure and just renovating the entire basement facility. Lewis expects to bring these findings back to the Board by early December.