Sonoma County gave up Tuesday on the mental health wing it had been planning for its jail since 2015. Supervisors voted unanimously to terminate the 72-bed project and move its money to a proposed treatment campus at Los Guilicos. At 10:15 p.m. that night, deputies found a man alone and unresponsive in his cell at the jail in Santa Rosa. He was pronounced dead 34 minutes later — the first in-custody death at the jail in more than two years.
The wing supervisors killed Tuesday was never built, so the vote changed nothing inside the jail that night, and nothing ties the two events together. But they land, hours apart, on the same question: where Sonoma County will treat people whose mental illness runs them into the criminal justice system, and how long they will wait for it.
Two votes, one direction
The board handled the decision as a single agenda item with two separate votes July 7, both 5-0, moved by Supervisor Chris Coursey and seconded by Supervisor James Gore, according to the action record from the Clerk of the Board.
The first vote accepted a reduced $54.6 million conditional award from the California Department of Health Care Services to build 88 behavioral health treatment beds, and picked the county’s Los Guilicos campus off Highway 12 east of Santa Rosa — alone or paired with the Orenda Center site on Neotomas Avenue — for further planning.
The second vote directed the county’s chief executive to start terminating the Sheriff’s Behavioral Health Housing Unit, the jail wing, by unwinding its 2017 construction agreement with the state and returning the $40 million grant behind it. The $27.2 million the county had set aside locally for the wing rolls over to the new campus instead.
11 years, zero beds
The jail wing dates to 2015, when the state awarded Sonoma County $40 million through its SB 863 jail construction financing program to build a 72-bed unit for treating and rehabilitating inmates with mental illness. The county signed the construction agreement on Feb. 3, 2017. Then costs climbed past the grant, and kept climbing. The project never broke ground.
While it idled, the county banked money for it: $20.58 million in one-time capital funds, plus $6.62 million a year set aside for operations that never began. That is the $27.2 million now pointed at Los Guilicos.
The man who died
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office said deputies found the man alone in his cell at about 10:15 p.m. Tuesday and began life-saving measures. Fire and medical crews continued the effort. He was pronounced dead at 10:49 p.m. He had been in custody since September 2024, facing four counts of arson. The Sheriff’s Office has not released his name, and says an independent death investigation will determine the cause and manner of death.
The sheriff’s own in-custody death log, posted online under AB 2761 — the state law that makes agencies publish every custody death — shows how long it had been: the last death at the Main Adult Detention Facility was May 1, 2024, a 28-year-old man awaiting arraignment who died of accidental fentanyl intoxication. Before that, a natural-causes death at a hospital in January 2024, and in September 2023, two deaths in two days — one an overdose, one a suicide. Three of the four were the kind of deaths treatment beds are pitched to prevent.
A campus that is not paid for
The new project has already shrunk once. The state’s original May 2025 award was $67.7 million for 104 beds at the Orenda Center. Closer study found the site needs $20 million to $25 million in grading and slope work, and county staff now peg Bay Area behavioral health construction at $1.3 million to $1.4 million per bed. The county asked to cut the project to 36 beds. The state said no. It settled at 88 beds — and the state cut the award proportionally.
At $1.4 million per bed plus contingency, staff estimate the 88-bed campus at $135.5 million. The county has identified about $85.6 million: the state award, the jail wing’s $27.2 million and $3.8 million in opioid settlement funds. That leaves a gap of roughly $50 million, which continued annual set-asides could narrow to about $30 million by 2030.
The staff report is direct about who the campus is for: it would serve “a similar population” to the jail wing, “constructing certain locked facilities to support justice-involved persons in addition to the general public.”
And it is not a done deal. The state will give the county 30 days this month to prove it controls the land, a funding agreement is due by August, and the beds must be built by June 30, 2030. If a construction solicitation going out this month shows the gap cannot be closed, staff wrote, the county will hand the award back.
What the record shows
The coroner’s investigation will say what killed the man found in his cell Tuesday night. The county’s books already say what happened to the buildings promised for people like those the jail holds: 11 years, two state awards totaling more than $94 million, and not one of those treatment beds built. The supervisors’ bet is that one large campus can succeed where the jail wing stalled. Until the money shows up, people in custody with mental illness stay where they have been all along — in a jail that was never built to treat them.
FAQ
What did the Board of Supervisors vote on July 7?
Two separate 5-0 votes on one agenda item: accept a reduced $54.6 million state award to build 88 behavioral health treatment beds at Los Guilicos, the Orenda Center or both, and terminate the Sheriff’s 72-bed Behavioral Health Housing Unit at the jail, returning its $40 million state grant.
Where would the new treatment beds be built?
Either entirely at the county’s Los Guilicos campus off Highway 12 east of Santa Rosa, or split between Los Guilicos and the Orenda Center at 1430 Neotomas Ave. in Santa Rosa. A design-build solicitation this summer will settle the site and the real cost.
When was the last in-custody death at the Sonoma County jail?
May 1, 2024, according to the Sheriff’s Office in-custody death log — an accidental fentanyl death at the Main Adult Detention Facility. Tuesday night’s death is the first since then; the cause and manner are under independent investigation.