Warren County Jail surveillance system upgrade could be costly

By Joe Beck -- jbeck@nvdaily.com

FRONT ROYAL -- An aging video surveillance system in the courthouse and jail could cost Warren County almost $240,000 to upgrade in the near future.

The expenditure represents one of the sharpest increases discussed by a procession of department heads and constitutional officers who appeared before the Board of Supervisors at a Tuesday work session to explain their budgets for fiscal 2013.

County administrator Douglas P. Stanley removed the request from the proposed countywide budget in the hopes that some alternatives to the new spending can be found.

Robert B. Childress, the assistant county administrator, presented the budget for maintenance and building grounds. He said afterward that he is still trying to find alternatives to the security upgrade as proposed by Intertech Security, the company that repairs and maintains the system.

"We've still got some work to do with Intertech," Childress said.

Company representatives told Childress late last year that they can no longer service or support the recording system because its parts are obsolete and cannot be easily obtained.

The anticipated opening of a new regional jail and a new public safety building nearing completion complicate plans for upgrading the courthouse surveillance system, Childress said.

In a memo to Sheriff Daniel T. McEathron in December, Childress warned that the opening of the new jail, the need for the courthouse video surveillance system to "interface" with the surveillance system in the public safety building and the abbreviated life span of the current jail could lead to some budgetary "overkill."

"It simply doesn't make sound economic sense to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a new system on a facility you won't be using in [2 or 2-1⁄2] years," Childress wrote, referring to the current jail.

The work session also included farewell remarks from Chris Fisher, manager of the Shenandoah Farms Sanitary District, who is leaving his job Friday to join a highway consulting firm that contracts with the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The supervisors also heard McEathron plead for a minimum 5 percent raise for employees in his department and throughout the county after three years with no regular pay increases.

McEathron said it was "extremely important" that employees receive a "substantial" increase this year to begin making up for the pay raises lost since the recession imposed years of austerity on the county.

McEathron said a 5 percent increase would add $193,000 to his department's budget, although, as a constitutional officer, "it doesn't affect me personally."

"We've got really good employees," McEathron said. "It's time that the board show their employees they're worth it."