Thumbnail photo: Though it's owned by the state, the Del Norte County Courthouse houses the District Attorney's Office and the Probation Department. | Amanda Dockter Pointing out that Del Norte County has 23 youth under its supervision, according to her most recent statistics, District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey said a feasibility study to determine how their needs would be met during the rehabilitation of the county jail seemed unnecessary. Coming about a month after she and her colleagues approved a proposal to house adult inmates at the Youth Opportunity Center building while the jail is under construction, Starkey said Tuesday she worried that having to go through a feasibility study would delay the process. “I feel it’s one extra layer,” she said before voting against the county’s proposal. “And I don’t know necessarily why we’re doing this now and in this process.” Despite Starkey’s opposition, her colleagues approved adding a task order to the agreement Del Norte already has with Nichols, Melburg & Rossetto to conduct the feasibility study. The Board’s approval authorizes the county to spend up to $48,000 for the study, which will cover two needs: Determining where to house juvenile probation during the jail project as well as a potential long-term “strategic opportunity” to create a justice services campus. County staff are eying the vacant lot at 5th and G streets, across the street from the Del Norte County courthouse as a possible location, Assistant County Administrative Officer Randy Hooper said. According to Hooper’s staff report, the long-term opportunity would include relocating the probation department’s main office and the District Attorney’s Office to the new facility. “For many years it’s been a liability for the county, in a way, to have those services in the courthouse because we don’t own the building any longer,” he told supervisors. “We did at one point, but we no longer do so now.” The Judicial Council of California currently owns the Del Norte County Courthouse, Hooper told Redwood Voice on Thursday. Under a joint occupancy agreement Del Norte has with the state, the county is responsible for part of the building’s ongoing maintenance and operations. If the Judicial Council decided to do a major renovation of the building, Del Norte would be on the hook for about 40 percent, Hooper said, but the county doesn’t have any control over choosing a vendor. “It’s a difficult position for us to be in,” he said. “The timing of needing to find the space for juvenile services coincidentally works with considering using some county property to provide for all of these related uses, so we’re hoping it works out.” NMR’s proposal was the lowest of two Del Norte County received when it came to the proposed feasibility study. The county received a proposal from Whitchurch Engineering, whose fee is $67,500. According to Hooper, in addition to submitting a proposal that’s about $20,000 less than Whitchurch Engineering’s bid, NMR is already working with the county on the jail rehabilitation project. Hooper, NMR representative Deven Carter and Del Norte County Sheriff's Capt. Kyle Stevens proposed the Youth Opportunity Center as the most economical option for continuing to house adult inmates while the jail is under construction. That proposal was estimated to cost $1.1 million to $2.1 million versus the roughly $8.5 million price tag for housing male inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison and female inmates at the Humboldt County Jail, they said. The jail rehabilitation project is expected to cost about $10 million with funding coming from the Board of State and Community Corrections’ Community Corrections Partnership Program and CalAIM’s Providing Access and Transforming Health Initiatives Program. A $3 million federal appropriations that came from the late U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein in fiscal year 2022 is also helping pay for the rehabilitation. According to a conceptual timeline Hooper presented to the Board on June 10, construction on the project is expected to start next spring. On Tuesday, Hooper told Starkey that NMR’s feasibility study might take three to four months, though he said he couldn’t be more specific until the firm starts the work. Starkey, however, noted that while Hooper said county staff thinks the vacant lot across the street from the courthouse could be a potential home for juvenile services and, later, justice services in general, the feasibility study will be “looking around Del Norte County for various places [where] we could house the Youth Opportunity Center…” Del Norte County resident P.J. Estlund, who has a background in government finances, also questioned the need for a feasibility study. “I’ve been reviewing the proposed budget,” she said. “I think the probation department has plenty of money and if they need another $48,000 for another feasibility study, the proper place for that is in the budget process.” According to a breakdown of the county’s general fund for fiscal year 2025-26, presented to the Board on June 24, supervisors approved about $5.6 million in expenditures for the probation department. The probation department is expected to generate roughly $3.67 million in revenue. Del Norte County shuttered its juvenile detention center in 2023, transforming the facility into the Youth Opportunity Center. Incarcerated youth are currently housed in the Humboldt, Mendocino or Shasta county juvenile detention centers, though they’re still booked into a detention facility from Del Norte County and must travel to the area for court appearances. On June 10, Chief Probation Officer Lonnie Reyman told supervisors that the juvenile services division still needs a temporary detention facility to hold youth after they’re arrested and when they return to Del Norte for court.