STRYKER, Ohio — The board of the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio decided Monday to allow its member counties to delay setting the number of beds needed for 2018 until Aug. 30.

The bylaws in the regional jail operating agreement require the five member counties reserve bed counts for the next year before Aug. 1.

However, some regional board members said they won’t know until late August how much their counties will receive in state funding for T-CAP, or the Targeting Community Alternatives to Prison program.

After a lengthy discussion, the 10-member board agreed to extend the deadline for submitting bed-space reservations to Aug. 30.

Lucas County is looking to get $1.734 million from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for the program to place certain low-level, nonviolent felony offenders in CCNO rather than in state prisons.

Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken said he was prepared to decrease his county’s current allotment of reserved beds from 303 to 272. He said the county could receive T-CAP funding to pay for up to 79 additional beds in the regional jail for low-level offenders sentenced in Lucas County Common Pleas Court

Lucas County officials said they are working out details with local judges on implementation of the T-CAP program and will know after Aug. 21 the number of beds it will need at CCNO.

“We need some more investigation before we can start locking ourselves into large numbers of dollars,” Mr. Gerken said after the meeting.

Contact Mark Reiter at markreiter@theblade.com or 419-724-6199.

First Published August 1, 2017, 4:00 a.m.