Candidates for Onondaga County Sheriff Toby Shelley, a Democrat, and R.J. Lenhart will be on the ballot. One of the questions candidates will have to answer if elected is how to move the operations of the downtown jail to Jamesville Correctional Facility. Credit: Chris Libonati | libonati@centralcurrent.org

County officials will hold a public meeting about the closure of Jamesville Correctional Facility on Wednesday.

The meeting will start at 10 a.m. on the 14th floor of the county office building in the county executive’s conference room.

Onondaga County legislators voted to close the correctional facility on Feb. 7, about two months after County Executive Ryan McMahon and former Sheriff Eugene Conway proposed the closure.

Current Sheriff Toby Shelley has so far said he will not move people incarcerated at Jamesville to the Onondaga County jail unless the New York State Commission on Correction approves the change.

The commission has some authority over the process. It can petition for judicial intervention if it believes minimum standards for jails are about to be violated.

Last week, McMahon sent a letter to the commission with a “concept overview” for his plan to close Jamesville.

The plan included details about how he envisioned incarcerated people being transferred from Jamesville to the jail and how the county would handle any population overflow.

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Chris Libonati is the managing editor of Central Current. He is a founding editorial member of the organization and was hired as Central Current's first reporter. He previously worked at the Syracuse Post-Standard...