OK County commissioners approve contract with company that will help find land for new jail
Oklahoma County commissioners approved a $202,000 agreement with Smith-Roberts Land Services on Wednesday as it continues to hunt for a place to build a new county jail.
Stacey Trumbo, Oklahoma County's engineer, told commissioners before they voted to approve the Smith-Roberts agreement he had structured it so that the land acquisition specialist could review more than a half dozen potential sites the county might consider for the new jail.
"It is set up for maximum flexibility," Trumbo said. "They could maybe review about seven different sites for us, but we'll only end up buying one."
More: Broken Trust: How the Oklahoma County jail leadership failed those it sought to protect
Oklahoma County continues to encounter significant opposition to locations it has been considering.
Officials currently are evaluating additional information about spots where a new jail could be built. But it is not yet clear whether the county is following a community activist's suggestion for it to consider buying land next to the existing jail to use as its new home.
Oklahoma County appoints Rochelle Gray to jail trust
Commissioners on Wednesday also appointed Rochelle Gray to serve out the remainder of former Sen. Ben Brown's term on the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority.
Gray's appointment returns the authority's board to a full compliment of nine members for the first time since late 2022. Three resignations (including Brown's) happened 2023. Two of those happened after a multi-county grand jury issued a scathing report in March about the jail and its operations.
Before Brown's departure in June, Brian Maughan, chairman of the Oklahoma County Board of County Commissioners, attempted to appoint J'Me Overstreet to fill a vacant seat previously held by M.T. Berry, a retired assistant city manager in Oklahoma City who also had served for years as its chief of police.
More: Commissioner: New jail to be 'night and day' improvement from current jail's problems
But Maughan couldn't get the support of his fellow commissioners for Overstreet, and ultimately appointed James Johnson Jr., a criminal justice/social work professor at Rose State College, to fill Berry's seat in late June.
As for Gray's appointment, a short biographical outline attached to her nomination stated she has 15 years of background working on tasks involving operations transformations, process improvements and risk management issues.
Gray is a manager in Deloitte Consulting's government and public services practice who has worked with federal agencies like the U.S. Postal Service and the Internal Revenue Service to help them modernize their information technology infrastructures and to adopt best practices involving those systems, the materials state.
Before joining Deloitte, Gray worked for the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., where she performed various risk and project management
Gray is a certified project management professional who earned a management and marketing bachelor's degree from Virginia Tech University.
On Wednesday, she declined to comment about her interest in serving on the authority's board until after she is sworn in.
Maughan said Wednesday he was happy to have learned Gray was willing to serve. Commissioners approved Gray's appointment unanimously.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Smith-Roberts Land Services retained by OK County to aid in jail land search
