Island County’s first juvenile detention facility is mere months from completion.

Detention Manager Gerald Murphy said construction should be complete by Feb. 16, and that the 21-bed Coupeville facility attached to the adult jail could be open as soon as March.

“There was a need for it,” Murphy said. “We can get the kids better service here in town than being out of town because they’ve got to come back to this community.”

Currently, juvenile offenders from Island County have to be transported to facilities in Skagit and Snohomish counties — an arrangement that can get quite expensive.

Juvenile Court Administrator Mike Merringer said Island County currently has an arrangement with the two counties to house juveniles. Skagit County charges a fee of $100 per day per juvenile, while Snohomish County charges $129 per day per juvenile. Additionally, Island County pays its reserve deputies $25 per hour to transport the juveniles. A round-trip to Skagit County runs about three hours, while a trip down to Snohomish County averages about five hours.

Merringer said the county budgets $130,000 per year to pay for housing the juveniles, and an additional $20,000 to pay the reserve deputies for transporting them.

As of Nov. 15, Merringer said the county has already exceeded those figures for 2005, tallying up $280,000 to house the juveniles and an additional $29,000 in transportation costs.

The new juvenile detention facility should help the county break even.

“We’re hopeful that it will be a break-even proposition for the general fund,” said Island County Budget Director Elaine Marlow. “That we’re not spending any more general fund dollars in the future than we currently spend.”

Current construction costs, which include not only the construction contract, but the architectural and engineering fees, building permits and furniture, have been budgeted at $6.2 million to $6.4 million. Marlow said funding for that phase of the facility has come from bond proceeds, a voter-authorized special sales tax collection and real estate excise taxes.

The special sales tax, approved by voters in 1998, adds one-tenth of 1 percent to the regular sales tax rate of 8.3 percent and brings in around $800,000 annually.

While the numbers aren’t finalized yet, Marlow estimated that the facility would cost about $250,000 annually to operate. Training new corrections officers and other necessities of running a facility, including feeding and housing the youth, and paying utilities and insurance, are covered by that figure. An additional $645,000 has been estimated annually to pay the proposed 14 full-time corrections officers who would staff the building. Funding for the operations of the building also comes from the special sales tax collection, as well as some current expense dollars out of the county’s general fund that are currently spent to house youth in other counties.

Financial figures for the facility will likely be finalized in December, following a meeting of the Island County commissioners.

Like the adult corrections facility, the juvenile building will be operated via touch-screens and feature a keyless system — with backup keys just in case. Murphy said movement inside the building will be very controlled and monitored by cameras also operated via the touch-screens.

The current Juvenile Court Administrators and the CASA program will move into the bottom floor of the building once it is complete.

Additionally, the new center will feature “lots of programming” for resident juveniles.

“They’ll always be busy,” Murphy said. “They’ll have exercise and all that, critical thinking programs, and behavior modification. We can start them up on drug and alcohol issues, and get them the assistance they need — in terms of someone to do follow-up treatment — when they get out.”