By no stretch of imagination does Sheriff Bill Brown resemble Captain Ahab, the vengeance-obsessed, one-legged sea captain out of Moby-Dick. And certainly, the proposed new North County jail can never be confused for any great white whale. But by the strained standards of Santa Barbara county government, they’re close enough. And as of late Monday morning, Sheriff Brown — after eight years — had finally caught up with his personal Moby-Dick.
Culminating a four-hour special meeting, the county supervisors voted 4-1 to affirm their prior commitment to building a new North County jail despite recent revelations that the out-of-pocket costs to Santa Barbara County taxpayers will be $15 million more than expected. Even for the largest public works project in county history, that’s a lot of money.
Going into Monday’s meeting, the outcome seemed very much in doubt. This April, the supervisors learned that the three construction bids for the new jail came in $11 million over what project managers had estimated. With ancillary other costs factored in, that translates to a $14.7 million wide gap. Although the county will still receive $80 million in state grants to build the jail, the higher bids mean the county will have to pony up 22 percent of the construction costs rather than the 10 percent Sheriff Brown had long assured the supervisors.