In a major change to the county’s jail system, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to minimize operations at the Main Jail near Santa Barbara and expand the new Northern Branch Jail near Santa Maria.

Supervisors voted 3-2 to follow County Executive Office recommendations for a “smaller but better resourced jail system,” as explained by Assistant CEO Tanja Heitman — reducing the Main Jail to a 128-bed facility and adding 256 beds to the new Northern Branch Jail for a total of 728 beds.

That’s a decrease from the current capacity of 1,095 beds, and 23 beds fewer than the capacity the county had for decades before the Northern Branch Jail opened last year.  

First District Supervisor Das Williams, Second District Supervisor Laura Capps and Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann voted in favor of the plan, while Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson and Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino voted against it, preferring an option with a higher jail capacity.

The county has seen a decrease in arrests, court filings, people supervised by probation and people in jail custody in recent years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Heitman said.

This week’s meeting and vote were focused on conceptual plans. Staff will return to the Board of Supervisors with design plans and a report on diversion efforts to see whether the jail’s average daily population can be safely reduced from where it is now. Departments working on those efforts — including Probation, District Attorney and Public Defender — think it can be.

It costs less to add onto the Northern Branch Jail than to renovate or tear down and rebuild portions of the Main Jail, according to Jeff Frapwell of the County Executive Office.

Operational costs are expected to go down enough with the new jail facilities — which are designed to require less staffing — to offset debt service for the construction, he added.

Sheriff Bill Brown and local police chiefs urged the county to build enough cells onto the Northern Branch Jail to increase the system’s capacity, not decrease it.

“I inherited a jail system that was bursting at the seams,” Brown told the Board of Supervisors. “We as a county do not want that type of situation to ever happen again.”

“I think it’s naïve to think that in a year we’re going to be able to divert enough people out of jail that we’re not going to open in an overcrowded state,” he said.

Kelly Duncan of the District Attorney’s Office said the board shouldn’t reduce capacity to the point that it couldn’t hold the current in-custody population.

During deliberations, Supervisor Williams said the Sheriff’s Office’s massive overtime expenses — projected at $12 million for the current fiscal year — are the primary reason to build more capacity on the Northern Branch Jail.

“I think the overtime expenses we have now, and the growth of them, 50% higher than three years ago, in overtime expenses, is threatening the efficacy of the department and is the greatest fiscal threat to the stability of the county,” he said.

Supervisors Capps and Hartmann supported the plan to build 256 additional beds at the Northern Branch Jail.

“I really want to put our highest aspiration out there and try to meet it, and try to keep that pressure on and say that’s the community we want to be,” Hartmann said, adding that if the county can’t reduce its in-custody population, the supervisors can re-evaluate the capacity needed for its future jail system.

Capps agreed: “I think we have some room here to be both aspirational and prudent at the same time.”

Supervisors Nelson and Lavagnino wanted staff to bring back design plans for 1.5 pods — 384 additional beds — at the Northern Branch Jail.  

Nelson said the county would be tying its hands with anything less. By supporting the one “pod” option the county would be “purposefully under-sizing our jail,” he said.

County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato presented a graph showing the huge increase in funding for the Sheriff’s Office custody operations in the past 20 years, partly because of opening the Northern Branch Jail but mostly from cost increases for running the Main Jail.

The jail operating costs were $40.4 million in 2011-12 (about $54 million in today’s dollars) and $90.5 million per year now.

“I’m just saying there needs to be some shift because this is not sustainable, so we have to change something,” she said. “I would say, you know, if the board wants to make a shift, no (budget) expansion request for any public safety department unless it’s geared toward diversion. Period. Maybe no expansion request for any department unless it goes toward diversion. There has to be a shift if we want to make a shift. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

The county is trying to make a shift to “address things our community has been talking about for so long,” she said.

Lavagnino said he agreed that the current system is not sustainable, which is why he supports building onto the Northern Branch Jail and minimizing the Main Jail, which has much higher operating costs.

His motion for a minimized renovation of the Main Jail and building 384 beds onto the Northern Branch Jail failed, 2-3.

Supervisors then voted 3-2 to support staff recommendations, the minimized renovation of the Main Jail and 256-bed expansion of the Northern Branch Jail.