HOLLIDAYSBURG — Blair County commissioners are seeking proposals from food service companies willing to begin providing inmate meals, an option some other county and state prisons currently use.

Commissioners Dave Kessling and Amy Webster voted Thursday to solicit proposals with the hope of reducing operational costs by $300,000 and of relieving corrections officers of kitchen assignments.

Kessling said that prior to Thursday’s vote, companies currently providing inmate meals were asked to take a look at prison’s food service operations and offer insight into their services.

“We didn’t tell them what we were paying,” Kessling said. “But what we found out was they could do the job for about $300,000 less than what we’re doing now with one person.”

Until July 11, the county employed a full-time kitchen manager, Brooke Lafferty, who supervised operations and worked with the corrections officers and inmates to plan, prepare and distribute meals to about 350 inmates, three times a day.

Webster said that the idea of using a food service company at the prison was under consideration before the manager submitted her resignation with two week’s notice.

In wake of the resignation, Kessling said he considered the option of relying on a food service company to temporarily provide inmate meals on an emergency basis.

But Kessling said he backed away after hearing that it would cost close to $100,000 a month and after hearing from prison personnel that staff and inmates were willing to continue with their kitchen duties.

If and when the county signs a contract with a food service company to provide inmate meals, Webster said the practice of having inmates work in the kitchen should continue.

“We didn’t want that to stop and these companies will allow it,” Webster said.

As for corrections officers who work in the kitchen, Webster said they can be reassigned to other locations in the prison. The food service provider would be expected to assign culinary staff to run the kitchen, thereby saving the county the $47,000 salary and benefits being paid to the kitchen manager.

Current commissioners are not the first to take a look at the cost of feeding inmates, which fluctuates based on the prison’s population and the price of food.

In 2019, when the bill for feeding inmates was close to $1 million, the county prison board, chaired by then-Commissioner Bruce Erb, proposed the creation of the kitchen manager position with expertise in food management, including purchasing and preparation costs, as a way to control and cut costs.

Webster, who wasn’t on the commissioners board in 2019, said that because the county continued to purchase food through the state’s cooperative purchasing program, the hiring of a kitchen manager didn’t make a difference financially.

“It didn’t save us anything,” Webster said.

County financial records show the prison’s food costs in 2023 at $1.02 million and in 2024, at $1.04 million. As for this year, the prison’s food purchases have added up to $470,000 through the end of June.

Meanwhile, Somerset County commissioners voted in June to put their prison’s meals in the hands of Trinity Foods, a Florida-based company. They signed a three-year contract expected to cut their costs by $200,000 annually, based on the price of $3.24 per tray for the first year. Trinity also provides meals to jails in Butler, Allegheny and Indiana counties, based on information relayed to the Somerset County commissioners.

The state Department of Corrections relies on Aramark, a Philadelphia-based company, to provide meals at its 23 state prisons. That company also handles food service responsibilities at schools, health care facilities, stadiums and other venues.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.