Carroll County Sheriff’s Office Closer to New Move
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HUNTINGDON, Tenn. — Six years after the state nearly shut down the Carroll County Jail because of poor conditions, the new jail and office space for the sheriff’s department is nearly complete. “We will be connected to the jail and it will be nice to be able to get back to where the sheriff’s department and jail is in one building because now I have to tend to both,” Sheriff Andy Dickson said. The inmates and jailers are already using the new county jail outside of Huntingdon, while the Sheriff and administrators worked ten minutes away inside the city. Sheriff Dickson says they’ll all be under the same roof by the end of April. The Carroll County 911 board bought the old building and plans to put it to good use. “There’s several offices in the building so it will house our equipment,” Kristy Meggs said, Director of Emergency Communications District. “Our 911 equipment, the dispatchers for the county and also the emergency management agency, and the county fire will have office space there.” Mayor Kenny McBride says the new jail was paid for through a 30 percent property tax increase in 2012. That amounts to about a $70 tax hike for every $100,000 worth of property. Business owner Debbie Maxey says the tax hike was difficult. “Our taxes here in Huntingdon [are] almost 10 percent so as a small business owner that really hurts,” Maxey said. Sheriff Dickson says building a new jail was a cheaper alternative for tax payers, because if the jail shut down, it would have been worse. “Not only would we not been getting the money from the state for the state prisoners, but we would also be having to pay someone to house our county inmates elsewhere,” Dickson said. The Sheriff says they saved on tax payer dollars by using inmates to help with construction.
