USDA funding for a new Beaufort County public safety facility/jail is off the table unless a bond referendum is passed by the public.

In a letter dated July 11, USDA State Director Randall A. Gore wrote that it is the lack of  “significant community support” and the “current contentious nature of the project” that led the USDA to decline to offer funding without the bond requirement.

On July 7, a public hearing held before the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners meeting brought out both supporters and detractors of the project that would replace the existing Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, Emergency Management Office, e-911 call center and Beaufort County Detention Center with a new facility slated to be built in the Chocowinity Industrial Park. County officials were seeking $18 million of USDA funding to be paid back over a 40-year span.

“I was very pleased with the outcome on that. There’s a lot of people who’ve done a lot of hard work to stop the jail,” said Beaufort County Commissioner Gary Brinn.

However, Brinn acknowledged the USDA announcement does not stop the process of building a jail, even though it does take away one option to fund it.

“It’s just one step that we had to go through. What they will try to do now is try to find alternate financing — through a local bank or through bonds. It’s just slowed the process down,” Brinn said.

The committee tasked with overseeing the preparation for and construction of a new public safety facility met Wednesday afternoon to do just that — tasking Beaufort County Finance Officer and Assistant Manager Jim Chrisman with finding the best options and cost of options to possibly finance the project in lieu of USDA funding. Chrisman said there are two other methods by which the public safety facility could be paid for: through limited obligation bonds, in which multiple investors on the open market invest; and through private, and likely local, bank loans. In both cases, the public safety facility, once built, would be used as collateral and Beaufort County would be required to make payments on the loan over a short period of time.

With the USDA funding option no longer available, it’s the shorted period of time to make payments that concerns Commissioner Al Klemm.

“Due to the fact that the people protested and USDA turned us down just indicates that we’re going to have a larger debt service payment each year. The advantage to it would be the term of the loan would be shorter. So, overall, less interest, but the debt service each year will be about $400,000 to $500,000 more,” Klemm said. “I would have thought the smart thing to be done would be to get the USDA financing. We’re just going to have a larger debt service payment per year.”

Klemm said in the long run, it will affect Beaufort County taxpayers — to what extent is unknown, but it could represent a one-cent hike on the current property tax of 53 cents per $100 valuation.

This action is the second time USDA has declined to loan Beaufort County the money to build a new public safety center. In 2005, a plan was in the works to purchase the then K-Mart shopping center on West 15^th Street and repurpose it as a county center including all county offices, as well as a joint city and county public safety facility. The project would have cost $9 million. However, a public hearing at the time revealed many residents’ fears of economically destroying downtown Washington by moving all county offices to the new center. USDA rejected the loan request as a result.

Chrisman said he will present his findings regarding funding options for the Chocowinity public safety complex at the Commissioners’ regular meeting on Aug. 4.