Less than two years ago, the voters of Greene County approved building a new county jail and on Monday, the first step toward construction of that facility became a reality.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held where the new jail is going to be located, south of the Law Enforcement Center Administration Building, on East Lincoln Way in Jefferson. Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams shared his overall comment about the journey that he and everyone else involved have had to go through to get to the start of building a 20 cell jail, which Williams sees as a tremendous increase from the current jail.

“Most definitely. We’re still improving by 12 cells which is going to help a lot, with enough capacity in the future if we had to, to increase it by another 20 cells. It’s going to work out really good for the community. It just feels really good to know that finally it’s going to be started. Hopefully, (it’ll be) done by November of ‘26 so we can start catching up on some stuff with inmates. And I just want to thank the supporters that got us here to this point.” 

Greene County Supervisor Chair John Muir walked through the background work that needed to be done before construction of a new jail could happen. He acknowledged the work by the engineering firm, ISG; as well as the construction manager at-risk with the DCI Group, to help take the load of working through this process off of solely being just the Supervisors. 

“We had to cut some things because we wanted to get the cost down a little bit. And then we had to put some things back in because it just made sense at the time you’re building it to have those costs, inflation has affected some things, but it’s good to get it done. Our old jail has been used up. The state was telling us that we knew it needed some attention, and we’ve got the perfect location, I think, to construct it. It’s all good.” 

The voters approved a new jail not to exceed $10 million in November of 2023, with over 60 percent that was needed for a super majority. The jail will include a total of 17 cells for a total of $11,367,290. The Supervisors felt comfortable using some of their reserve fund to pay for the rest of the project.