The city of Jamestown will be hiring part-time, on-call matrons to work in the city jail when the city is holding women until they can be arraigned in Jamestown City Court.

The issue arose after an inspection of the city jail from the state Department of Corrections. The position isn’t a new one, but it hasn’t been filled for years because it was deemed unnecessary to the operation of the jail. Matrons won’t be uniformed police officers, but civilian employees who will work on an on-call basis. If the uniformed officer overseeing the jail during a shift is a woman then there would be no need for a matron to be called in to work.

Matrons will allow the female block of the city jail to be opened and used, so there is a benefit to having matrons. Currently female prisoners are placed on benches in the holding area and the holding tank. In addition to allowing more of the jail to be used, matrons supervise female prisoners when they’re brought to the jail, when they need to be taken out, during searches and retaining keys for women held in the jail.

The fact the Jamestown Police Department will have to hire matrons isn’t a budget buster. It’s a small addition to the budget and certainly won’t be the biggest cost increase in the budget when Mayor Kim Ecklund unveils her 2026 budget about a month from now. It’ll barely be a footnote.

But it is an unfunded state mandate on local taxpayers no matter how one looks at it. And it’s a mandated expense in a budget full of them through contracts with minimum manning requirements, spending tied to arbitration agreements with some city unions, mandated services, inflation-related cost increases and the end of one-shot revenues used to help lower the 2025 tax increase.

Every year the city looks at pennies, nickels and dimes in an attempt to lower tax increases. Hiring matrons – even at a paltry cost – takes the pennies out of the equation for a position whose worth is certainly up for debate.