Ward County Jail addition complete

County commissioners, the sheriff’s department and Chamber of Commerce debuted the $38 million jail expansion.

The project was expected to finish in June of 2018, but construction crews finished seven months ahead of schedule.

The addition nearly triples the jail’s capacity from 104 beds to 300 beds.

“The people spoke and they said they want this community to be safer and they want the county to be safer and have a new jail and that’s when a lot people went to work. A lot of hard work by a lot of people. Right now you’ve got a as functional of a jail and basically a state of the art jail as anybody in the state,” said Brian Kunz, with Adolfson & Peterson Construction.

County Commissioners also thanked the community for their support and voting ‘yes’ to the expansion through a half percent increase of sales tax.

“Thank goodness that the people in our community voted and finally said yes we need this and thankfully we have the sales tax that was bringing all of this in,” said Shelly Weppler, county commissioner.

Sheriff Bob Barnard says he plans to begin moving inmates in on Dec. 15.