Union County is earlier in the process. The current jail is a 36- bed facility in Lake Butler dating to 1950, built on the site of the original 1922 jail. In January 2025, the county issued a request for a construction manager for Phases 2 and 3 of a new Public Safety Complex, budgeted at roughly $13.9 million. Sheriff Brad Whitehead's office is also working through a $1.2 million courthouse security upgrade. In a county this size, every capital project competes for the same thin slice of available money.
Lafayette County's jail in Mayo last saw a major renovation in 1996. Funding has come in stages: $4 million in the 2023-24 budget year, an additional $900,000 for 2025-26 after inflation pushed costs past the original estimate. Commissioners set a final cap of $5.3 million, covering demolition of the facility's older sections, expanded behavioral health and medical observation space, and sitework. Sheriff Brian Lamb, in office more than 15 years, has outlasted every budget cycle this project has gone through.
Highlands County carries the fiscal designation alongside a 474-bed jail and a much larger population. It broke ground in December 2024 on its first expansion since 2004, a 96-bed addition at roughly $17 million, with the current budget covering about half. The underlying math is the same one Liberty, Gilchrist, Union, and Lafayette are working through, just on a different scale.
None of that shows up in a ribbon-cutting photo. What shows up is a sheriff and a county commission who kept asking, year after year, legislative session after legislative session, until the money came together, and a community that finally gets a jail built for the job it has now, not the job it had in 1942 or 1950 or 1996. For more information on Florida jails visit flsheriffs.org/jails.
Liberty County is one of 29 Florida counties considered fiscally constrained, defined as counties where a single mill of property tax raises no more than $5 million..
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