When every penny counts: Yost praises sheriff’s jail garden savings

By BEcky Brooks

RFD Man­ag­ing Editor

While look­ing for cost sav­ing pro­grams across Ohio, State Audi­tor David Yost vis­ited the San­dusky County Jail gar­den on last month.

Sher­iff Kyle Overmyer, the state’s youngest sher­iff, said that since his depart­ment put in the gar­den on jail prop­erty behind the facil­ity on Coun­try­side Drive in Fre­mont, he has been able to save nearly $20,000 by rais­ing veg­eta­bles and chickens.

“Some­one just donated me $600 in chicken feed,” he said moments before Yost arrived at the jail. That chicken feed was com­ing from Fre­mont area busi­ness 3D Ag Repair, Feed & Supply.

Since 2009, Overmyer has been able to oper­ate his gar­den and chicken coup with­out spend­ing any money out of the gen­eral fund.

Plants and funds for the chick­ens have all come from donations.

“Every­thing is dona­tion,” the sher­iff empha­sized, adding his keynote phase, “It’s a win,win.”

The jail gar­den began was a small plot behind the jail a cou­ple years ago and has grown in the few years since.

“We have about an acre and a half,” he admit­ted. “We’ve changed the veg­eta­bles a lit­tle bit.”

Pris­on­ers from the jail still do all the gar­den­ing under the eye of offi­cer Jim Sea­man. The sher­iff said there are 15 to 20 pris­on­ers involved in the pro­gram work­ing in the garden.

The gar­den pro­duces corn, onions, pep­pers, toma­toes, mel­ons and more. The sher­iff also added a pump­kin patch and pump­kins from that patch out­side the fenced gar­den are donated to chil­dren in the county with can­cer, he said.

He also reported that the gar­den is very pop­u­lar with area gar­den clubs, which tour the facility.

Overmyer said he added chick­ens to his mini farm in 2010. The 100 chick­ens raised last year were processed which added 600 pounds of chicken meat to the jail kitchen to feed the pris­ons. Overmyer said he had the chick­ens processed by a Shiloh fam­ily busi­ness. “I haul them there myself,” he added.

“This year has 60 broil­ers,” he said about the jail pen. The kitchen staff uses the meat for chicken and dumplings, chicken sal­ads and other meals.

The sher­iff took over the depart­ment in 2008 and shortly there­after faced a mas­sive bud­get cut from the county government.

“Back in 2008, I was faced with a huge prob­lem, I was cut $200,000,” he pointed out. To keep deputies on the road, the sher­iff looked at every other aspect of his oper­a­tion that could be trimmed.

Overmyer told Yost that he made major changes to the food offer­ings in the jail and today offers three basic square meals, many cold foods and no frills.

“I’m all about money,” the sher­iff said. Part of his solu­tion besides using more eco­nomic food sup­pli­ers was also adding the gar­den – one of three such pro­grams in Ohio, accord­ing to Overmyer.

The sher­iff has admit­ted his pro­gram dates back to old ideas about jail farms and the depart­ment being more self-sufficient.

“This is won­der­ful,” Yost com­mented Fri­day, while walk­ing around the chicken yard and fenced in gar­den where pris­on­ers were at work on a Fri­day afternoon.

“Sher­iff Overmyer is a tax­pay­ers’ hero,” the state offi­cial added.

Yost walked into the locked gar­den area and spoke to trustees work­ing there among tall tomato plants and Brus­sel spouts. He asked each why they were involved in the program.

One man serv­ing his time was Jon Smith of Fre­mont. “It gives me a good expe­ri­ence,” he said about how he is spend­ing his six months with the jail. He added he is look­ing for­ward to a gar­den of his own after he gets out.

Yost said pro­grams like the jail gar­den is an idea that he intends in the future to post on his web­site to share with other juris­dic­tions. The Ohio Audi­tor of State hosts a web­site called www.skinnyohio.org that offers gov­ern­ment enti­ties pro­grams and per­for­mance audits to oper­ate more effi­ciently. He plans to add sum­maries of gov­ern­ment per­for­mance audits to the web­site with a key­word search option.

“The local tax­pay­ers in that county or city have already paid … a lot of it can trans­fer between juris­dic­tions,” Yost com­mented about the impor­tance of shar­ing cost-savings programs.

As for Overmyer’s jail gar­den pro­gram, he shared that the jail food bud­get has dropped from $120,000 from sev­eral years ago to $88,000 annu­ally – not what you would call chicken feed.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Oct 11 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.