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Costs continue to mount to house inmates in the Bexar County Adult Detention Center.
The crowded facility is now bracing for the summer months when criminal arrests and incarcerations tend to rise. The county lockup was a main topic at Tuesday's county commissioners meeting.
The county jail may be the biggest drain on county taxpayer dollars, costing in the tens of millions of dollars in overtime costs each year to staff it. Commissioners approved another round of overtime on Tuesday.
The jail is already at capacity with about 5,000 inmates, so the county is paying Burnet and Kerr counties to house additional inmates.
Commissioners voted on Tuesday to pay those counties a combined $1 million to house inmates for four months.
County Judge Peter Sakai told commissioners it's time for staff to do another deep dive into the problem because the jail population appears static.
"Why are people sitting in the jail," he said. "There's a complexity to it. ... obviously the sheriff has one part of that, the district attorney another part of that, and the judiciary has another part of that — and ultimately commissioners court has to pay for it."
With everyone wanting safe streets, there are no easy and cheap answers to the crowded jail.
In other action on Tuesday, commissioners approved a 10-year, 40% property tax break for a multi-family housing project at Pearl.
The property tax break to Oxbow Real Estate is an incentive for it to invest $23 million into two properties on East Elmira to turn them into new, market rate multifamily units.
When completed, Coopers Row North, developed by Quincy Residential, will have 75 units in the popular area to the north of downtown.
