More jail news this week indicates the city will not build its own facility after all and the possibility of a county jail at the old Kuhn Memorial Hospital property is not going to happen.

The cost to manage and operate a city jail far outweighs the current cost of transporting city prisoners to facilities outside the county.

“It would cost about three times as much to keep prisoners here than what we are paying to send our prisoners to Issaquena and Madison County,” Police Chief Milton Moore, who is also the chairman of the jail committee Mayor George Flaggs put together, said following a city meeting this week.

According to the committee, it would cost up to $6 million to build the city jail and another nearly $1 million a year to operate the facility.

The city is currently paying $350,000 a year to house prisoners in Issaquena and Madison counties.

That money could be used for a joint facility between the county and city, something Flaggs has mentioned in the past and would still like to do if the Warren County Board of Supervisors would be open to the idea. In December, the supervisors voted to build a county jail at the Ceres Industrial Park, something that has been met with opposition from the city and economic development community.

According to Flaggs, supervisors William Banks and Charles Selmon may be leaning towards discussing that possibility.

“If the board of supervisors open up the opportunity for us to negotiate with them, we can take the $4.4 million that we were looking at in the master plan to build the (city) jail, and collaborate with them and save the taxpayers in the city money.”

What a novel idea of saving taxpayers money, while also working together to build something everyone can agree upon is desperately needed.