SALT LAKE CITY — County officials from around the state told the prison relocation committee Thursday they're ready to provide more housing for state inmates at a lower cost than new prison beds.

Former Weber County Attorney Reed Richards, who still works with the office as well as the Utah Sheriffs Association, said state prison and county jail facilities will reach capacity in the next few years without new construction.

"We'll have to start letting people out," Richards told the Prison Relocation and Development Authority, the committee charged with making a recommendation on moving the Utah State Prison from Draper.

Richards said, after the meeting, rather than build a single new prison, the state could consider constructing several regional facilities, possibility in Weber, Utah and Washington counties.

"By 2018, somebody's got to build, either the state or the counties," Richards said in an interview. "You can talk about this for several years. But you'd better stop talking."

Even though the committee has not made a decision, work is already underway on a request for bids for moving the decades-old facility at Point of the Mountain to free up the nearly 700-acre site for development.

On Thursday, the committee agreed to start looking for a consultant to help put together the request for bids. The cost of the consultant is not expected to exceed $300,000, assistant attorney general Alan Bachman said.

The committee also agreed to hire Gary Free of Free and Associates to appraise the property based on a bid of $62,500 and a completion date within 60 days, Bachman said.

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Rep. Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, a member of the committee, suggested that county officials come up with their own bid with specifics about which jail facilities would be expanded and what programs for inmates would be offered.

"If counties want to take 2,500 inmates, we'll probably need a little more information than, 'We would like to have it,'" Wilson said. "This is like building another prison but just spreading it around the state."

The state prison system currently has more than 5,600 beds, including some 1,600 at the Gunnison facility. In 2012, the state contracted for 1,560 beds in county jails to house inmates.

A study by the Utah Association of Counties found that if the state does not increase its prison capacity, by 2020 the percentage of inmates housed in county jails would increase from just less than 23 percent to nearly 29 percent.

While it costs the state almost $132,000 to build a new prison bed in an existing facility, according to the study, the state reimburses county jails up to just less than $51 a day to house inmates.

Several committee members noted the most expensive prisoners to house, including those on death row and the elderly, aren't eligible to be moved to the lower-cost county jails.

"I don't think anybody is suggesting we don't need state facilities. We do," Richards told the committee, especially for what he termed "challenging inmates." Jails, he said, can better help prisoners preparing to enter nearby communities.

Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, a committee member, asked at what point is the efficiency of a prison diluted by sending inmates to county jails.

"Certainly, I think there are some breaking points," Stevenson said.

Another committee member, Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollack, said there has been a "wonderful partnership" between the state prison system and the county jails.

Pollack said no matter what's decided about a new prison, he believes the state will continue to rely on county jails to provide at least the same number of beds as they do currently.

"We need each other," Pollack said. "The counties need the state. The state needs us."

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