Jail & Bail raises both funds, awareness

SANDPOINT — It’s usually never a good thing when somebody rings you up to ask for money so they can bail out of jail.

But on Wednesday there is an exception to that maxim.

That’s the day of the chamber of commerce’s Leadership Sandpoint Jail & Bail Fundraiser. Community and business leaders will be hooked and booked into the new Bonner County Justice Services facility for juvenile offenders.

Participants are being encouraged to create their own aliases and offenses which brought about their incarceration.

Fist-shaking tirades against The Man would probably add some nice color, although immediately attacking the toughest inmate to establish primacy among the general population is decidedly not encouraged.

Leadership Sandpoint, the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce’s community-oriented leadership program, partnered with Bonner County Justice Services to develop the fundraiser. It benefits Junior Achievement and Northside Elementary School’s garden project.

“It should be a real neat event,” said Mack Deibel, a chamber spokesman and a Leadership Sandpoint participant.

In addition to raising money for worthy projects, the event will be used as something of a dry run for facility operations and personnel. It will also draw attention to the county’s youthful offender programs, the strength of which staved off the closure of the existing detention facility.

“It gets the community leaders out to see the facility,” said Ken Wood, a Leadership Sandpoint participant who manages the AmericanWest Bank branch in Sandpoint.

The new 27-bed facility replaces a substandard facility retrofitted from a former single-family residence at North Boyer Avenue and Schweitzer Cutoff Road. A ribbon-cutting to commemorate the opening of the new facility at 4002 Samuelson Ave. is set for Monday.

An online event page can be found at www.sandpointchamber.org/JailBail.html. A donation page is located www.active.com/donate/LSJailBail.