The Board of Supervisors approved a $7.2 million plan Tuesday to re-open shuttered jail dorms at the Pitchess Detention Center and allocated $1 million for much-needed maintenance at Newhall's Hart Park. Also included in the $21.
8 billion budget was $17.3 million for 105 additional deputies to patrol unincorporated areas countywide including Castaic and Agua Dulce. The budget will take effect July 1, the start of the fiscal year.
The big winner was law enforcement, with a focus on relieving jail overcrowding. Locally, jail funding will add 252 beds in the South Facility at the Castaic jail complex, where dorms were closed in 2001 to cut costs, said Anna Pembedjian, an aide to Supervisor Michael D. Supervisors also directed Sheriff Lee Baca, whose department runs the jail system, to report back in the coming weeks on reopening the entire South Facility, Pembedjian said.
The South Facility has a capacity of 1,500 inmates but currently houses 828, she said. At the William S. Hart Park Museum, home of the silent screen star who bequeathed his Newhall estate to the county, museum officials were overjoyed to receive the $1 million allocation to restore and conserve priceless collections of Western art and artifacts.
"It's always the case when you have old objects, they need preservation, conservation and restoration," curator Bill Estrada said. The money also will help make repairs to further protect the treasures inside Hart's hilltop mansion, county museum director Jane G. The mansion was built in 1920 and needs structural repairs including work on the roof, on a leak in the living-room chimney and on a retaining wall.
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