Ogle County Finance Task Force examining jail costs

OREGON — Early discussions by an Ogle County Board task force dedicated to ensuring the future financial stability of the county have centered around increasing landfill revenue and decreasing Ogle County Jail expenses, possibly by closing the jail.

Closing the jail is one of many options being explored, but no decisions have been made, said Jeff Billeter, the Ogle County Board member who chairs the Finance Task Force and the Finance, Revenue and Insurance Committee.

“We’ve got a financial challenge that we’ve got to come up with answers,” Billeter said. “You want to make sure you come up with the right answers and, to do that, you have to study all the possibilities to the best of your abilities.”

Task Force members have varying opinions, but all are trying to be proactive and are willing to look at what other counties have done, including merging services, he said. Billeter added that they are looking to do “whatever we can do to get a balanced budget and not reduce services and not increase taxes. It’s a mighty challenge.”

The jail, located at 601 W. Washington St., Oregon, opened in early 2021.

It has 157 beds, and an average daily census of about 40 inmates, Ogle County Sheriff Brian VanVickle said. The census is taken at midnight and does not account for people who come in or go out during the rest of the day, he said.

The jail costs a little more than $2.09 million annually to operate, VanVickle said. The Stephenson County and Boone County jails both cost about $3.05 million annually to operate, he said.

“We’ve been very responsible with the tax dollars,” VanVickle said. “While we’re open for conversation if there’s a better way to do things, I’m not sure housing them [inmates] in a different facility is a better option. Especially in light of having a brand new state-of-the-art facility.”

Reducing spending related to the jail isn’t the Task Force’s only focus, but it is a large part of their discussions, Billeter said.

“‘When it’s that big of a piece, you look at that first,” he said of county expenses. “You go from the biggest to the smallest. You can save on all the paperclips you want, but it’s not going to change anything.”

The county has about $8.4 million in bonds left to pay off on the jail’s construction, in addition to other expenses, such as day-to-day administrative costs, Billeter said. There is money set aside to pay what’s owed on the bonds in fiscal year 2025, but there’s still three more years of payments after that to consider, he said.

Historically, Ogle County pays for its bonds using revenue from tipping fees generated from Orchard Hills Landfill, Billeter said. That revenue has diminished in recent years, he said.

Tipping fees are the fees garbage companies pay to Ogle County and Davis Junction – where the landfill is located – to dump their trash, Billeter said. The county and Davis Junction split those profits, he said.

Billeter did not know how much revenue tipping fees have generated in recent years.

Negotiations with Waste Management, which owns the Orchard Hills Landfill, are ongoing, Billeter said. If the county can get a longer term agreement for tipping fees, it would “help things quite a bit,” he said.

“It’s the age-old problem and it’s a problem a lot of counties in Illinois are facing, and that’s not enough revenue and too many expenses,” Billeter said.