The County Council moved toward reopening the retired jail Tuesday by approving $640,000 to update computers, install kitchen appliances, hire fix-up crews and complete whatever work is needed to get Oxbow ready for inmates.
"This signals to me that Oxbow Jail will finally, after a decade of being mothballed, be opened and begin servicing the citizens that have demanded that it be placed back in use," Winder said. "This is a major watershed event."
The council doesn't plan to open the entire South Salt Lake jail, only one 184-bed wing that will include drug treatment and vocational training for inmates who need it.
The funding comes less than a year after the GOP-led County Council rejected along party lines a similar funding request, diverting the money instead into a criminal-justice master plan.
The council now will pull $320,000 out of that master plan and $320,000 out of the general fund to make Oxbow operational - a move that comes a month after the current jail absolved the sentences of 14 inmates, including some class A misdemeanor offenders, because of overcrowding.
"We have done about all we can with alternatives [to incarceration]," Democratic Councilman Randy Horiuchi said, "and we are still suffering."
So the council voted 9-0 to ready the minimum-to-medium-security Oxbow for opening. It did not, however, commit the millions more to staff and operate the facility. That discussion will come in November, when the council considers an annual Oxbow budget that the sheriff said Tuesday will approach $5 million.
