News Photo by Kayla Wikaryasz Alpena County Sheriff Erik Smith speaks to the Alpena County finance, ways, and means committee on Feb.10.

ALPENA — The Alcona County Sheriff’s Office has entered into a five-year contract which began Jan. 1, to house inmates in the Alpena County Jail.

Alcona previously housed its inmates in the Iosco County Jail, Alcona County Undersheriff Keith Myers said.

However, Iosco County planned to raise the price tag this year. Myers said that switching to Alpena, while it is an increase from what they paid Iosco, also provides inmates with better services at a more up-to-date facility.

Alcona is paying Alpena County $285,000 for 15 beds at the jail in the first year of the contract. Each year, the cost will be reassessed depending on the cost of living.

“It saves us some cost on what it would be to run our jail,” Myers said.

Alcona typically has 10 to 12 inmates at a time. That figure can sometimes be as low as seven or as high as 20. It makes more sense for them cost-wise to send their inmates to a bigger jail rather than run their own.

“The cost of running a jail does not change a lot depending on the number of inmates you have.” Myers said. “Your general cost, what it costs you to run your jail, is going to be the same whether you’ve got 10 beds full or 100 beds full.”

Alpena County Sheriff Erik Smith said that the Alpena jail has 108 total beds, however, the jail has to separate people based on factors like gender and the severity of a person’s crime, which makes the actual number of available beds closer to 80.

Montmorency County, which also has an inmate contract with Alpena County, and Alcona County pay about the same amount to house their inmates in the Alpena jail, Smith said. Montmorency has already been in a contract for five years, and they also pay for 15 beds.

Smith said that due to jail reforms that took place just after the COVID pandemic, the jail is able to hold inmates from Alcona, Montmorency, and Alpena counties without any concern about running out of space.

“We have room to make this work for all three counties,” Smith said.

Those reforms decreased the number of inmates in the jail due to laws like one that created a presumption of a sentence other than jail for most misdemeanors and certain felonies, according to the guide to Michigan’s 2020 jail reforms.

Alpena’s jail needs to have the same number of staff on hand whether the jail is full or not, Smith said, so it makes sense to offset costs by allowing Montmorency and Alcona counties to share the jail space. The jail did not need to hire any new staff with the addition of Alcona’s inmates.

Financially, the money from Alcona and Montmorency counties helps offset some of Alpena county’s costs of running a jail, which county taxpayers have to provide.

Reagan Voetberg. News Staff Writer. rvoetberg@TheAlpenaNews.com.