The Oklahoma City Council took a step toward reducing tension with Oklahoma County officials Tuesday when it voted to pay just over $2 million for the housing of city detainees in the county jail.
The agreement is retroactive from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2025, which settles payments owed for the last two fiscal years.
The city and Oklahoma County have had the agreement in place since 1997 for the housing of city detainees.
In the agreement, the city agreed to pay a flat rate of $750,000 for Fiscal Year 2024. For Fiscal Year 2025, the city will pay a rate of $319.79 per inmate with an estimate of 3,928 inmates, which would cost the city around $1.2 million.
A pod inside the Oklahoma County jail is shown during a previous year.
There was no discussion prior to the council’s unanimous vote to approve the agreement.
Oklahoma City also will pay for the cost of transportation and supervision for each prisoner transported by the authority to an outside hospital or facility for medical care. Myles Davidson, chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, previously called the debate over who would pay for transportation and medical care “non-negotiable.”
Davidson could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
The debate over the jail bill had been occurring as the city and county also were at odds over the location of a new jail. At one point, the county sued the city after it denied the county’s request for a zoning change to build the jail, but the case was dropped in January.
The jail, and an adjacent mental health facility, are expected to be built on a 60-acre site near Del City. Dirt work has already started for the mental health facility, while county officials work on how to pay for the jail itself.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma City will pay county just over $2 million for jail services