Fulton County commissioners unanimously approved a $4.4 million contract to modernize the elevators in the Rice Street jail, after debating whether the project is moving quickly enough and where it ranks as a priority on the long list of problems to fix in the troubled facility.
Wednesday’s vote took place just weeks after Sheriff Patrick Labat asked the county to expedite the project as he raised concerns that frequent elevator breakdowns were continuing to pose safety and health risks at the seven-story jail. After the vote, he continued to criticize the commission.
“For nearly two years, the elevator modernization project has been presented to the Board of Commissioners as an urgent and potentially lifesaving need,” he said in a statement Wednesday to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Yet, we remain without sufficient progress while failing elevators continue to delay the movement of people requiring emergency medical care.”
Commissioner Dana Barrett on Wednesday said the project is taking far too long given that commissioners approved $1.65 million in emergency funding for it in August 2024. The bulk of the work is not scheduled to start until March and finish in January 2029.
“If it was an emergency and an immediate need, then the timeline is deeply concerning,” Barrett said Wednesday.
County Manager Dick Anderson said, however, that the project “is not an emergency purchase” and that the county has run a disciplined procurement process, which takes time.
The contract approved Wednesday is with TK Elevator Corp. County officials said all of the major components in the elevators will be replaced.
“Anything can happen, as you all know, at the jail, at the drop of a hat, particularly from a facilities perspective,” Anderson said, adding: “But if we want to have a sensible way of dealing with these issues over the next five — to even as long as 10 years — we need to have a process.”
Officials added that emergency authorization was requested for another company to provide elevator consulting services, not for the installation of elevators. Barrett responded it was odd that the consulting would be considered an emergency but not the project as a whole.
The county started working with the consultant in January 2025, leading to the formal procurement process.
Commissioner Bob Ellis said the consultant’s assessment of the condition of the elevators “turned out to be better than we thought at that point in time.”
Joseph Davis, director of the county’s Department of Real Estate and Asset Management, added that a major “blitz” project to improve the jail’s facilities began in September 2023.
“Had we been able to, for example, start the elevator modernization in 2025, we would have brought the blitz to a screeching halt,” he said, adding that upgrades to fire alarms also were taking place.
“Did we intentionally slow-walk the process? No, we didn’t,” Davis told commissioners Wednesday. “Could it have expedited? Certainly.”
Officials added that priorities also shifted after a Department of Justice report, released in late 2024, concluded the jail’s conditions were unconstitutional, in part because of deteriorating physical facilities that contribute to violence. The county later entered into a legal agreement, known as a consent decree, with the DOJ to improve the jail’s conditions.
County Attorney Y. Soo Jo said Wednesday none of the reports by the federal monitor evaluating progress on the consent decree have highlighted the elevators as an immediate top priority.
Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman said concerns about the elevators have been overblown.
Sheriff Labat disagrees.
“The Board and County Administration are contemplating dated processes and procedures while human lives hang in the balance,” Labat said in his statement.
Labat has clashed repeatedly with several members of the commission, over issues such as jail funding, staffing and whether to build a new jail or refurbish the existing facility.
Last month, he wrote letters to commissioners informing them about two incidents where he said elevator failures jeopardized safety.
In one, a pair of elevators weren’t working and a responding medical team had to carry equipment up several flights of stairs to reach an inmate who had been stabbed, according to the sheriff. In a second instance, an officer was trapped for five to seven minutes in a stuck elevator, alone with several inmates and out of reach of backup officers.
Responding to the latter incident, Ellis on Wednesday said: “What was one officer doing in the elevator with four inmates?”
The jail, which opened in 1989, has nine elevators, including four “housing elevators” used to transport inmates; two kitchen elevators; a medical elevator; and two other elevators for attorneys.
Since January 2024, there have been more than 90 instances of elevators being taken out of service, sometimes for extended periods, according to the sheriff.
On Wednesday, however, all of the elevators in the jail were working, according to a county spokesperson.
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