The Anacortes City Council will be briefed on the plan at 7 pm on Monday evening at City Hall.
The present jail is overcrowded.
Mayor Dean Maxwell said the jail was built to hold 80 inmates and that on some days it holds as many as 260 inmates. "That's troublesome for a community that has a low crime rate and prides itself on being a safe place to live and to own a home and to work. We've got a problem. It's past due."
He told the Council Tuesday night that as many as 8,000 warrants are outstanding in Skagit County at any one time, "which means that certain people who ought to be in jail aren't in jail."
How to pay for the jail is still up in the air. The Council will ask voters in August to approve a sales tax increase of three-tenths of one percent. But, there's a catch: the county would need to keep all of the money from that tax increase to pay for a new jail. But, state law requires that 40 percent of that money be apportioned back to the cities.
One other unsettled item is just where to put the new jail. Currently three sites are under consideration. Gunn Road, the Truck City site on Old Highway 99 and the Alf Christianson Seed property across from the current jail on Kincaid Rd. in Mount Vernon.