No money in new Mecklenburg budget to reopen Jail North. What happens next?
Mecklenburg County leaders’ budget for the next fiscal year doesn’t include money to reopen the former juvenile detention facility the sheriff wants to repurpose to address overcrowding at the county jail.
But County Manager Mike Bryant said Wednesday that doesn’t mean county money won’t eventually be spent on the project.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office announced plans Tuesday to reopen Jail North, a former juvenile jail off Statesville Road in north Charlotte that closed in 2022. But instead of housing young people, it will be used to alleviate overcrowding at the county’s main jail in uptown Charlotte.
The reopening is slated for early August, the sheriff’s office said in its announcement. Sheriff Garry McFadden previously attributed a surge in jail population to Iryna’s Law, state legislation named for the Ukrainian refugee killed on Charlotte’s light rail that, among other things, changed some pretrial release rules.
The sheriff’s office plans to hire up to 50 detention officers with starting salaries of about $68,000, plus a signing bonus and higher pay for those who work the nightshift.
County commissioners asked Bryant at a Wednesday discussion of his proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1, whether the spending plan includes funding for the new jail project.
Bryant confirmed his budget doesn’t include money for Jail North because he didn’t find out about McFadden’s plans until after the budget was put together. “My budget was already balanced and prepared to be presented,” Bryant told The Charlotte Observer.
Bryant added that his staff is working with the sheriff’s office “to learn more about” their plans, “but we’re not far enough along to know exactly what that means from a financial standpoint.
“You see what the jail population is doing, so we have to support that,” he said. “But we’ve got to just go through the process and analysis to see exactly what will be needed above and beyond his current resources.”
Asked if he thinks something will come together before county commissioners vote to approve a final budget June 2, Bryant said “probably not.” The sheriff’s office will need to gather more information on exactly how much reopening and operating Jail North will cost, he said.
“I don’t know what the turnaround time is for that,” Bryant said.
Mecklenburg funding options for Jail North plan
If funding issues stretch on past when the budget is finalized, the county could look into other mechanisms for getting money to the sheriff’s office, Bryant added. That could include dipping into fund balance, which operates like a savings account, or adjusting the sheriff’s office’s existing budget, he said.
Bryant told state officials this year that McFadden’s fiscal year 2027 budget request wouldn’t include a request to reopen Jail North as a juvenile detention center despite an uptick in public discussion about that possibility, the Observer reported previously.
The sheriff’s office said in a statement Wednesday that it is “always open to discussions” of reopening the facility as a juvenile detention center, but has made “little to no progress” in its conversations about the idea.
Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Sarah Mastouri told the Observer “the overcrowding problem has no bearing on the possibility of reopening Detention Center North to juveniles.”
Sheriff’s office leadership still plan to meet with the state Department of Public Safety official who oversees juvenile detention Thursday, she added.
Observer reporter Ryan Oehrli contributed to the reporting of this story.
